


The Cake is (Not) A Lie

by Xerxies19



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU - canon divergent after 3.03, Alpha!Scott McCall, Alpha!Stiles, BAMF!Stiles, Derek POV, Derek Uses His Words, F/M, Fix-it fic, M/M, Magic!Stiles, Pack Feels, Puppy Piles, References to Torture, Resurrections, Stiles fixes everything, Werewolf!Stiles, alive!Erica and Boyd, all alphas can change into wolves, contains season 3 spoilers, implied unicorn, the sheriff finds out, this fic was supposed to be about cake but it's not, tragically long oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 51,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xerxies19/pseuds/Xerxies19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone keeps sending Derek cakes that are neither made with explosives or monkshood. Things get out of hand from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cake is (Not) A Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a running joke about how this fic was supposed to be "6 pages tops" and about cake when I started writing it a few episodes into S3. It is now 104 pages, contains every trope I've ever wanted, and probably only 1% or less about cake. We all make mistakes.

            Derek blinked at the box handed to him by a bored-looking delivery driver, sniffing it for anything resembling an explosive or monkshood before taking it inside with him. It smelled sweet, but not like almonds; as he’d learned from listening to Stiles ramble apparently C4 smelled like almonds. Setting it down at the table, he opened it to find a small cake, explaining the sweet scent. What he couldn’t explain was why it was here, why there was thin green frosting lettering spelling out ‘none of this is your fault’ on it. Staring at it for several beats, he waited for the punchline in the form of a spell or a monster shooting out of it, but it never came.  
  
            He was still watching it when Isaac came down to see what his elevated heart rate was about, walking over to him and making an interrogatory noise before following his line of sight. A low ‘huh’ was all he vocalized while he watched it, trying to puzzle out why his alpha was staring at a cake, before swiping a bit of frosting off and sticking it in his mouth before Derek got his wits about him to stop the younger male.

“You gonna eat that, or continue looking for the meaning of life in it? It’s good, not poison, but you already knew that,” he stated quickly, reaching for another piece of frosting.

He snatched Isaac’s hand away, growling mildly, “It’s my cake, not yours. Back off.”

            The blond afforded him a rare smile, just a twitch of his lips, but it wasn’t tilted like his normal sneers. He knew exactly what he was doing, convincing Derek’s possessiveness that he really did want the gift by pretending to want to take it from him. It was mostly out of a concern that there really was something wrong with it, that he was probably strong enough to handle a dose of any poison that might be inside, that even if he didn’t pull through he probably deserved it anyway.

            He sliced into it, noting that it was chocolate, and set the small piece on a plate to eat it. It was a little dry, either because the baker was inexperienced or because it had been shipped, but it was good and he didn’t feel the effects of a poison yet. Any poison strong enough to override his healing abilities would have already taken effect, but he waited a few minutes before going back to finish the cake, just to be sure none of his pack ate it. There wasn’t anything written on the cardboard the cake had been sitting on, nor a return address, though he didn’t really expect there to be.  
  
            Two hours later he still appeared to be alive, wondering who would waste their time baking him a cake to send him a message that what was happening wasn’t his fault. Who would be so naïve to think it wasn’t. His pocket vibrated and he pulled out his phone, ignoring the text from Stiles about them ‘needing to talk’ about the dead bodies that had begun piling up again. He didn’t need the teenager to tell him what had killed them to know it was Boyd and Cora, therefore he was at fault for not rescuing them before this, not containing them quickly enough afterward. Minutes later his phone rang and he furrowed his brows before dismissing the call, wishing Stiles was capable of taking a hint when the phone started ringing again seconds later. Resolutely ignoring the next three attempts, he sighed when he heard Peter’s phone going off. Of course he had to answer it immediately; he had some sort of strange fascination with Stiles that got Derek’s hackles up. He focused in on the conversation to ensure whatever his uncle told him about the conversation was actually the truth.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Stiles?”

 _“Derek won’t answer his phone, but I knew you would. Those people weren’t prey for Boyd and Cora, they were virgin sacrifices. There’s some serious mojo going on in this town and being one-hundred forty-seven pounds of fragile virgin means I need the pack’s help to find and get rid of whoever’s doing this. I know you’ve got the Alpha Pack to deal with, but we can’t have a coven of witches sneaking up on us when we’re weak after getting rid of them.”_  
  
“We, Stiles?”

_“I don’t really care where Scott lands in this whole pack-not-pack dynamic or what Derek thinks about me, I’m gonna help your Alpha and your pack out because you’re not going to win without my help. I-Yeah Dad I’m talking to Scott about his Allison problems again because they looked at each other for five seconds today and he can feel the love in the air or whatever, give me a minute here. I’m a Spark, and I’ve been training with Deaton. In the future I can protect myself, so don’t even pretend I’ll be a burden. Anyway, I need to talk with Derek in person if he ever climbs out of the mire of martyrdom he’s trying to drown himself in. Pass the message on for me, would you? Or else I’ll tell Lydia where your nice little apartment downtown is and make sure she knows how to make it look like an accident.”_

“No need for threats, Stiles, I’ll let him know,” Peter answered sweetly, mouth no doubt curling into that slimy smile he reserved for Scott and Stiles.

“I’ll assume you were listening in on the whole conversation, but in case you weren’t, Stiles needs help losing his virginity so he doesn’t become a human sacrifice and he was wondering if you’d take one for the team. If not, I’ll offer my services,” the elder werewolf added with a smirk that drew a vicious warning growl out of Derek faster than the words could.

            He knew Peter was just trying to get under his skin, but that didn’t make his teasing any less effective. Maintaining his glare at his uncle, he waited for the other to tell him the real message, even if he knew it already.

“What did he actually say, Peter?” He grit out when no such information was forthcoming.

“He needs to speak with you in person, apparently those dead children you’ve been blaming yourself for were actually virgin sacrifices; our resident supernatural detective thinks it’s a coven of witches.”

“He’s not ours.”

“Oh, but how he wants to be, Derek. I offered him the bite once, did you know that? He refused, but I could hear the lie in his heart. Maybe if it were your teeth sinking into his hip-”

            He held his hands up in surrender and stopped talking when a clawed hand wrapped around his throat and red eyes flashed at him. Tipping his head to the side to expose his neck, he let a smile at being able to force his Alpha to lose control slip. Grunting and letting him go, he breathed deeply for a moment before speaking again, teeth receding into his gums.  
  
“He’s a Spark, he said so himself over the phone with you. You know I can’t risk killing him by trying to turn him. And…Stiles is loyal. I don’t need to bite him to have him in my pack, if he wants to be here,” he admitted, mulling the idea over.

“He’s already yours, nephew, you just have to acknowledge him as part of your pack. Actually answering his calls might be a good first step.”

“Fine, I’ll call him and ask him to come here.”

“Do consider doing something about him being a virgin, though, would be such a waste for him to become the next pretty face they find in the woods covered in their own blood.”

“I’ll come up with something. If you so much as touch him I will tear you apart, family or no,” he snarled, teeth gnashing.

“I will be the picture of restraint, dear Alpha,” he answered, smiling.  
  
“Now, when the fuck did you offer Stiles the bite?”

* * *

 

            Stiles came over at the same time as the delivery driver, the man handing a package to him as if he didn’t already know the skinny teenager wasn’t Derek Hale. He probably didn’t care. Setting the box down on the first table he saw, the only human in the apartment immediately launched into an explanation of all the terrible things the witches could be doing with the power they were getting from the sacrifices and the kind of things they needed to be on the lookout for. Or rather, sniffing around for, as the only giveaway modern witches had was the smell of magic or blood left on their person from their rituals.

“And how are we supposed to know what magic smells like, Stiles?” He snapped, cutting into his babble.

“W-well…I uh…Smell like magic? When I use it. You probably already know what I smell like, so you should be able to pick out the magic smell from the other smells, right? Oh god that means Peter’s gonna have to get all pedowolf close to me, doesn’t it? I swear, if you give me any bad touches I will give my dad wolfsbane bullets and have him shoot you.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been threatened by someone much more frightening than your father not to touch you anywhere,” Peter sneered, looking meaningfully at Derek, “Unless of course you want a little help with your virginity problem.”

            Nostrils flaring with anger, the Alpha breathed heavily, body taut with the force it took to keep his wolf from giving his uncle some deep wounds to remind him of his place in the pack. Baiting the Alpha and challenging his command wasn’t to be tolerated, but now wasn’t the time.

“Wow, okay, no, I would so rather die a virgin. I would rather die a virgin a thousand times, just-just no oh my god. Derek, make him go away, I can feel him undressing me with his eyes.”

            As much as his tone edged on joking, the older male could smell his fear, knowing he was reliving the time he traded himself for Lydia’s safety, constantly wondering when Peter was going to kill him and how. He’d forced his uncle to replay every single minute he was coercing the desperately brave teenager and if it hadn’t happened so long ago his punishment would have been much more severe than the slashes down his side that were still healing from last night.

“Peter, get lost.”

“But how will I know what to smell for?” He asked, tone light, feigning innocence.

“You know the scent, you were resurrected by magic. Get. Out,” he enunciated, eyes flashing.

“Don’t forget to eat your cake, if that’s what that sugary smell is coming from,” the elder werewolf suggested as he tucked tail and left the loft.

“Cake? There’s cake?” Stiles asked, entire topic of the conversation lost as he turned to open the package.

“Stiles, that’s not safe,” he started, darting forward to grab the teen’s wrist before he could bring the frosting to his mouth, cursing the fact that apparently all the teenage boys he surrounded himself with had a thing for swiping frosting from cakes.

“What do you mean? Is it poison? Is someone sending you _poisoned cake?_ ” His voice increased in pitch incredulously, “How evil do you have to be to send someone a poisoned cake that says nothing is your fault?”

“It says ‘none of this is your fault’, for one, and the last one wasn’t poisoned, but that doesn’t mean this one won’t be.”

“Last one? Who the hell is sending you this stuff?”

“I don’t know. There’s no scent on the cake or the packaging.”

He seemed to consider this for a moment of unusual silence, “If it was the witches, any harmful magic they did would have a scent, even spells to remove scent from objects wouldn’t be able to mask that. So…It’s safe to eat!”

            Derek instantly regretted letting go of Stiles’s hand when he moved his finger toward his mouth again, faster than he normally managed to move when he wasn’t tripping over something. Snatching at his wrist again, he wrapped his lips around the finger with the frosting and sucked it off, letting it go and wincing when he realized what he’d just done. Isaac coughed meaningfully and Stiles looked gob smacked, but the moment passed and he started talking again like always, wiping his finger on Derek’s shirt cheekily.

“Fine, I get it, you just don’t want anyone else eating your free cake. Sourwolf has a sweet tooth and you’re the Alpha so you don’t have to share your delicious pastry.”

“You should join my pack.”

“Whuh?” He replied intelligently, mouth open as the gears in his mind ground to a momentary halt before screeching back into action, “Okay. Yeah, sounds great, so long as Peter doesn’t ever look at me like that again on pain of death. Slow death. You need me anyway, admit it, I’m useful.”

            Ignoring the involuntary twitch of a smile he let show, he nodded, pleased that this was so easy, that he could smell happiness wafting off his new pack member. This might be the only good decision he’d ever made and he prayed he wouldn’t regret it one day.

“Good. Now, you said you could do some magic? We’ll need a scent to go off, if we’re going to catch these witches before they kill anyone else. Do you think you’re strong enough to hold them off if they do come for you?”

“Oh my god, I am not the only virgin left in Beacon Hills, and the Sheriff is my dad, there’s no way they’d come for me. Even if they did, I can totally protect myself against magic. At least for long enough to call you, and you’ll save me, right? I’m pack now, you have to.”

“Hey Stiles, does this mean Scott is pack too?” Isaac asked, eyes bright with something like hope.

“Probably not, but I’ll talk to him about it. Okay, Derek, are you okay with me working magic on you? It’s fine if not, but about the only magic I can do other than protection spells is…fire,” he ended, eyes wide with apprehension.

“You can put a spell on me, I’m fine with it,” he answered, knowing that if he didn’t trust his pack he didn’t deserve to be Alpha.

“Okay, don’t move, alright?”

            He placed a hand over Derek’s heart, closed his eyes, and concentrated. The next few minutes were probably the longest time he’d ever both kept his mouth shut and not been running for his life while in Derek’s presence, and the werewolf kind of missed the background noise, nothing but three familiar heartbeats and three breathing patterns to fill his ears. Stiles’s heartbeat was just as even as it always was, just a little on the fast side, but nothing to be worried about from a medical standpoint. Every part of him seemed to operate faster than everyone else who didn’t have a species speed bonus.

            With a sigh, Stiles opened his eyes and smiled, satisfied. Derek didn’t feel any different, but he could definitely smell the magic; it smelled like a thunderstorm, burnt ozone and rain. He gestured Isaac over, who registered the scent with a look of surprise, nodding to signal that he’d memorized it.

“I didn’t think you could really do magic.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence there, Isaac. Great to know you’re on my side, buddy. You’re a freaking werewolf, you can tell if I’m lying by my heart beat, and you still didn’t believe me? Derek, your beta is being mean to me.”

            Sometimes the emotions he’d trapped as far below the surface as he could bubbled up, like when Stiles whimpered and Derek just wanted to clutch him to his chest and make sure no one ever hurt him again, whether the pain was real or not. It was terrifying; he didn’t want to feel this way about anyone, not after what his love had done in the past. As far as he’d come, he still often smelled smoke.

“So what exactly did you do?” The blond pressed, ignoring Stiles as he had for years.

“A protection spell. It’ll work better against magic than it will against claws, but it’ll help a little with those too. I’m not sure how strong it is, so just do what you would do if you didn’t have a spell to protect you, Derek. Actually, no, you’re an idiot who throws himself in front of bullets for literally no reason, do what you would do if you cared if your pack died because you weren’t around. Who’s gonna save me if you get your wolfy ass killed, huh? Don’t let me die a virgin, Derek, I will haunt your afterlife.”

“I don’t think you can actually haunt other people’s afterlife,” Isaac retorted, mildly amused.

“Thank you, Stiles,” he said earnestly, knowing he was probably being too intense by the way Stiles swallowed loud enough to be audible to human ears and was looking at him like it was the first time they’d ever seen each other.

            Humans could always walk away from the pack, there was nothing but his unerring and largely misplaced sense of loyalty holding him here and Derek wasn’t about to make Scott’s mistake of never acknowledging all the shit Stiles went through for him. He knew Scott didn’t mean to do it, maybe all their years of friendship entitled him to it, but Derek didn’t have that going for him and he wouldn’t abuse the privilege of having the hyperactive genius at his beck and call even if he did. A thank you was a small price to pay for the balance a human brought to packs.

“It’s, uh, not a problem, big guy. I’ll be happy to do it for everyone once we know how the spell behaves on a werewolf. Even Peter, I guess, so long as he doesn’t give me that look while I’m doing it. He’s got his uses.”

“Wait, so you just did a spell on Derek without even knowing what it would do to a werewolf?” Isaac queried, scoffing at the idea and crossing his arms over his chest confrontationally.

“I knew it wouldn’t do any serious damage even if it did backfire like the first time I tried, it was a calculated risk!”

“What do you mean, backfire? Who or what did you try it on first, Stiles?”

“So, great team meeting, fantastic to be on the roster, congratulations all around, let’s totally do this again soon but I just remembered I have to read sixteen books on ritual sacrifice by tomorrow so I need to go now,” he sputtered quickly, making for the door only to find his classmate blocking his hasty retreat.

“Answer the Alpha, Stiles. You’re pack now, you abide by our rules.”

“Lacking any other volunteering subjects, I tested it first on myself, and I think it’s very important to remember that practice makes perfect and no one got hurt the next few times I tried it on the neighbor’s yappy dog and Derek is totally fine and in one piece therefore it was a valuable learning experience.”

“You said hurt, Stiles, how badly were you hurt? Show me,” Derek requested gently, knowing how skittish he got when he was cornered.

            This was his pack, his need to know if they were hurt, to assess the wounds himself, was deep, primal, and unstoppable. The teen must have used a spell to mask the scent of pain because it was nowhere on him, and now that he was paying attention it seemed like his normal smell was dulled as if it was only on his clothes.

“If you yell at me I swear to god I will forcequit this pack, even if I have to jump out your ten-foot-tall windows to get away. I know it was a stupid mistake, I don’t need you to tell me. Got it?”

            He bit his lip nervously, heart pounding painfully hard in his chest as he removed his plaid outer shirt and lifted his undershirt over his head, tossing them onto the small table near the door. There was gauze taped to his chest over his heart and he made a face as he pulled it off to reveal a healing but angry burn mark, still oozing blood in some areas. When it scarred it would be faint, but it still made him want to roar at Stiles for being so reckless with his own life. The other covered it back up and patted the gauze down with excessive caution, holding his breath for his Alpha’s outburst.

“Come up with a way to explain that to your dad?” Derek opted for instead, needing to know the cover story in the event he was ever asked.

            He was genuinely impressed that he kept his voice even.

“Coolant leak in the Jeep, I opened the radiator cap without waiting for it to cool after it overheated. You helped me fix it, Mrs. McCall patched me up.”

He nodded thoughtfully, it wasn’t the best, but it had the sound of something an overworked and overtired Stiles would do, so his father would probably buy it, “To avoid having to explain away the strange death of your neighbor’s dog or any more potential injuries to yourself, in the future you should try out any non-offensive spells you have on me first. I’ll heal, without any scars.”

“I’m not going to maim you with my stupid protection and healing spells.”

“Please, Stiles. I can’t face your dad if you die because you couldn’t heal from a spell I could easily survive.”

            Mentioning the Sheriff was a dirty tactic, but he didn’t hold himself above anything if it meant protecting his pack. The last time he’d thought of no one but himself his world had burnt down around him. The brown-eyed teen seemed to deflate, shoulders slumping as he pulled his shirts back on and nodded.

“I know it’s not my place to ask this but…” He trailed off and started to turn away like he was going to drop the topic, regretted even starting it.

“Seriously, one of us, it is your place. What were you going to say?” Isaac prompted, apparently warming up to him quickly.

“I think my dad should know. From what I could see of his notes, he’s already on the verge of finding out. I don’t know how long I can keep up the whole smoke and mirrors routine, and I cannot begin to describe his unholy fury when he finds out what I’ve been lying about all this time. Grounded doesn’t even touch it, he’d send me off to live with my grandparents in Wisconsin. If I come clean we have a better chance of me remaining within a thousand-mile radius and you short a few bullet holes. Besides, if he knows, he can make sure to get rid of any evidence of the supernatural for us.”

“You’re worried he’s going to get hurt if he doesn’t know, right?”

“I know you think he’ll be at risk if he knows but-”

“No, I was going to say that you’re right, Stiles. If you align yourself with my pack, or really any other werewolf right now, you’ll be a target for the Alpha Pack. They have no honor, no code, and they will go after your dad. We should do it as soon as possible, especially so he can keep a closer eye on you with these witches roaming the town looking for virgins.”

“We’re completely not telling him about the virgin-killers, he won’t go to work if he thinks I’m in any kind of danger. He drinks enough.”

“How many years of your life are you going to spend lying to your dad, Stiles?” The blond snapped, “Don’t you think he deserves to know before he finds you dead in the woods and spends the rest of his life blaming himself for not doing anything to protect you? Do you really want to ruin his life like that?”

            The scent of sadness hit him like a train and he almost stumbled with it, realizing belatedly that he had been straining his senses to try and pick up his companion’s scent over the magic he’d used to wash it away. Stiles blinked at tears but managed to keep his expression otherwise blank.

“I’ll tell him, but it’s on your furry ass if this goes pear shaped because of it.”

“What does he work tonight?” Derek asked, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible; the longer they waited the better the chance they’d lose the option to tell him.

“He gets off in three hours, why?”

“Ask him if I can come over for dinner. He might not believe you without a demonstration.”

“Okay, seven-thirty, don’t be late. Was there anything else?”

            He shook his head before they said their goodbyes and he told his ‘sourwolf’ to enjoy his cake all by himself. Smiling, he ignored the way Isaac shook his head and muttered about unresolved sexual tension, because Stiles was _seventeen_ , for god’s sake.

 

* * *

 

“Derek Hale, it’s good to see you without having to arrest you, for once. I…Don’t have to arrest you for something, do I?” The Sheriff asked, concern growing on his face.

“Oh my god dad, I told you already, I was wrong about the murders. You know it, I know it, the judge, jury, and executioner know it. This…is related, though. We should have dinner first

            The meal was tense, even if the pasta was good. The senior Stilinski kept glancing between them as if he could decipher the reason Derek was even here just from their limited eye contact.

“So are either of you going to explain yourselves now?” He pressed while they did the dishes.

“In a minute, dad, you really need to be sitting down for this.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I? You’ve been using protection, right? We can discuss the age difference, but I didn’t raise an idiot-”

Stiles dropped the plate he was holding into the sink and the sound of it landing, not broken thanks to some small miracle, halted the rest of his father’s speech. He was blushing furiously and his pulse had shot up. It took Derek two seconds longer than it should have to realize the teen was about to have a panic attack, snapping into action and covering the other’s mouth to force him to breathe through his nose. The junior had impressive control over himself, never tipping into a full-blown attack. Instead he carefully lowered his heart rate by breathing slowly, matching Derek’s respiration perfectly. The werewolf was infinitely grateful that Scott had pulled him aside briefly to tell him how he’d learned to combat Stiles’s panic attacks because the last thing he was equipped to handle was a human teenager that was bursting at the seams with anxiety and had no way to come down.

“We’re not…It’s not like that Dad, we’re not having sex. We’re not dating, nothing-nothing is happening.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Not really,” Stiles muttered, handing Derek the last plate to dry and heading into the living room.

“If it’s not that, what is it? I’ll love you, son, no matter what.”

            He could sense Stiles losing his nerve, watching the younger man grabbing his arm and rubbing it in an unconscious self-soothing fidget. Putting a hand on his shoulder, he squeezed comfortingly and didn’t take his hand away until the teen nodded at him.

“I’ve been lying to you for pretty much an entire year now, and I have a lot of regrets about that and I hope eventually you can forgive me. Lives were on the line and I had to make a decision and maybe I didn’t make the right one, but…All those mountain lion attack victims? They were killed by werewolves. When people were getting paralyzed and killed, that was Jackson as a horrifying giant lizard because he’s a twisted douchebag. Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd didn’t go missing, they were kidnapped by a pack of Alpha werewolves and now Erica’s dead and Boyd doesn’t know if he can go home after everything that’s happened.

“Derek’s missing comatose uncle is walking and talking even though he was dead at one point, and he caused most of those murders and he attacked Lydia and I really fucking hate him most of the time but his information is useful so we’re letting him live for now. Derek’s the Alpha and I’m part of his pack now, but I’m not a werewolf, still one-hundred percent flimsy human, except I can do magic so you don’t have to worry about me at all. Scott got bit the beginning of school last year, Allison’s family hunts werewolves and that particular quirk has killed the vast majority of them at this point. Allison’s aunt burnt down Derek’s home with his family in it because she was primordial ooze level scum. Lydia’s immune to supernatural things and my advances. And…Right now I think there are witches prowling Beacon Hills sacrificing virgins.”

“…Can we go back to ten minutes ago when I thought all that was happening was that you were having underage unprotected sex with a person of interest twice accused of murder?” The Sheriff asked weakly, overwhelmed.

“I’m sorry, Dad, I know this is a lot to put on you but I’m scared that if you don’t know you won’t be able to protect yourself if the Alphas come after you. Chris Argent has an endless supply of wolfsbane bullets, wolfsbane is the only thing that can kill a werewolf besides cutting them in half, so you should ask him for some. I care about these people, Scott, my pack, everyone…I-I’m probably not the man you and mom hoped I would be, I’m a liar and kind of a criminal and I’m sorry about ruining your life, but I can’t just let them die,” he ended, letting the tears fall as his breaths shuddered in and out of him, pain tangible in the air.

“Stiles Stilinski, all your mother and I ever wanted for you is that you would be safe, healthy, and happy. As much as I hate the idea of you in danger, you’re so much better of a man than I could have ever hoped for, than any parent could. I’m so proud of you, and your mother would be too. She’d…she’d be better at this. You are not ruining my life and you never will, son. I love you, always,” he explained, standing and pulling his child into his arms and holding him tight.

            Feeling like an intruder, he started to edge away, getting no more than a foot closer to the door before Mr. Stilinski’s eyes shot to him and gave him a warning look. He froze.

“Derek, could you wait in the kitchen? I need a moment with my son, and then I have quite a few questions for you.”

“Yes, Sir.”

            He very carefully didn’t eavesdrop, standing patiently in the kitchen mulling over a scuff mark on the floor. Fumbling with a slightly fraying edge of his Henley, he wished he’d opted to wear his leather jacket after all. It wasn’t like he could possibly make a worse impression on the Sheriff than the first two times, and the whole child endangerment would probably have a bigger impact on the third try than his clothes.

“Derek, do you think you could show me what a werewolf looks like? I can’t afford to be surprised if I meet any of these hostiles on the street.”

“Alphas can take a variety of forms, including turning into full-blown wolves, but our most common form is this one,” the alpha explained briefly before partially wolfing-out, as Stiles called it.

            Mr. Stilinski looked shocked for a moment, then training set in and his eyes shifted quickly to take in the physically apparent differences from his human form to this. He nodded, lips pursed.

“Do your feet have claws too?”

“They can, yes.”

“How does my very human son fit into your pack, whether he can use magic or not? You’re not using him, are you? Some sort of bait?”

“Oh my god, Dad, I’m not bait.”

“I would never use anyone in my pack other than myself as bait-“

“I have a serious problem with that and it needs to be discussed,” Stiles tried to say over him as he ignored the teen and ploughed on.

“-And humans even out werewolves in the pack, they keep us from becoming monsters. It’s proof that you’re a solidly built pack if the wolves in the pack can slow themselves enough that the humans can run with them on full moon nights. I’ll do anything in my power to make sure Stiles isn’t in any more danger than he manages to get himself into normally.”

“What are you going to do to protect him against these witches? Wait, you’re still a virgin, aren’t you Stiles?”

“Can we not talk about the fact that I have never had sex in front of Derek, Dad? Can we just not?”

“I sincerely hope you’re not going to pressure my son into having sex just so he can cease being a liability.”

            Stiles put his head in his hands, probably hoping he could stop taking part in this conversation if he simply pretended it wasn’t happening. His father was looking out for him, doing his job, and Derek understood his concerns completely. If their positions were reversed he’d be doing the same thing.

“I would never consider it. There is an issue, though, Stiles isn’t safe at my loft because of the Alpha Pack, and at night he’s not completely safe here either. Whether the people killing these kids are witches or not, someone like Stiles who can use magic and is also a virgin is the ideal candidate for sacrifice. I don’t know much about magic, but I do know that.”

“What about Chris Argent? Stiles, you said his family hunts werewolves, are they also equipped to deal with witches?”

“I’d have to ask, and we’re not…on the best terms at the moment.”

“Mr. Argent isn’t the only person in this town with a gun, a duty, and a child to protect, let me talk to him.”  
  
“Be careful, Dad, I don’t want you to lose your job because of me again.”

“So you chained Jackson in that van because he was a lizard that was killing people? Why did he try to put a restraining order on you?”

“He didn’t remember anything from his time as a slaughter machine and he’s a massive douchebag. Oh, he’s a werewolf now, in case you were wondering. No longer a lizard monster hell-bent on paralyzing me at every turn.”

            Stiles made the face that clearly acted out his reeling from saying the wrong thing, twisting into a grimace when he realized what he’d just said. His father just looked tired, sighing heavily at the thought of his son at the mercy of a giant lizard.

“How have you managed to survive this long, dealing with all this?”

“Magic!” He said happily, wiggling the fingers on both hands for effect, “Sparks are particularly lucky in the surviving department, even before they start actively practicing.”

“Do they make up for it by being incredibly clumsy and accident-prone, or are you just special?” Derek sniped.

“Did you-did you make a joke again? Oh my god, you have a sense of humor! Look, Dad, Derek Hale is a real boy after all!”

            He and the Sheriff shared a look for a moment before the other spoke.

“I am very sorry for any undue hardship my son has undoubtedly caused you so far. Thank you for tolerating him so well.”

“Stiles has earned his place in my pack, more than once. I still owe him my life a few times over. Any pack would be lucky to have him, and not because he’s a Spark.”

            The teen’s heartbeat picked up suddenly and he looked at Derek like he’d started speaking another language. His father’s surprise was more thoughtful, like he was puzzling the Alpha out. Derek knew he was too obvious, they’d be having ‘the talk’ soon enough, the one where the Sheriff cleaned every gun he owned while he spoke about respect and age and consent. He would never seduce Stiles, not after what had happened to him at that age, but he was hardly going to tell the Sheriff that. He felt naked under the man’s continued gaze, but met it.

“I should be going soon, if that’s alright, my pack isn’t at its most stable and I don’t want them to be without their Alpha any longer than necessary.”

“We should talk again soon, Derek. Stiles, you were tutoring Scott every Wednesday, weren’t you? Come to the station on Wednesday, Derek, I’ll be working the evening shift.”

            He nodded, somber. Stiles spluttered something he couldn’t follow about not killing his friends just because they were older and didn’t remember how to operate a razor more than one day out of the week.

“We’re not even having sex, I’m still a virgin, though if I had to lose my virginity to anyone I would totally be okay with that person being Derek. Honestly I don’t know if I should be happy or embarrassed you think I could possibly convince someone this objectively hot to have sex with someone like me-”

            The rest of his rambling died in his throat when Derek jolted out of his chair, making a split decision to pull out his phone and pretend for all he was worth like Isaac had texted him. Thank whatever higher power there might be that they weren’t werewolves and couldn’t hear his lie as easily.

“Sorry, on edge. Isaac says Cora and Boyd might have remembered something else about the Alphas and they need me there. Be careful, Stiles, and thanks for dinner, Sheriff.”

            And he turned tail and ran, not even being terribly subtle about it. Considering the situation he’d say he performed admirably. As much as he tried to burn and bury them he had some decidedly not-platonic feelings about the kid with mussed hair and a stupid-pretty smile he seemed to pull out of nowhere. He could deal with those, he could even deal with the way Stiles managed to make him laugh or crack jokes occasionally, made him feel like a worthwhile use of space. Knowing that Stiles had considered and was fully on board with the idea of losing his virginity to him? He didn’t even want to think about the kind of idiotic, blind trust the other had in him. He didn’t want to think about what kind of monster would take advantage of that, that he could turn out just like Kate if he did.

“Who died, Derek?” Isaac asked like he didn’t particularly care if someone really had kicked it.

            He blinked, realizing he had driven all the way to the loft without a conscious thought to it, wondered how long he’d been standing just inside after shutting the door behind him for his Beta to actually call attention to his behavior.

“No one, not yet, anyway. Stiles tutors Scott on Wednesdays, you should join them sometime. Pack bonding.”

“You just want Scott to join the pack.”

“And so do you. We agree on something.”

“You have a point. I like him, Stiles. He’s not a nice guy, really, but he’s never been mean to me.”

“You like him because he’s Scott’s best friend.”

“Not if I have any say in the matter.”

“Sharing, Isaac, I know you learned this in school at the age of five. You wouldn’t want Stiles to take Scott away from you, don’t do the same to him.”

“So who gets Stiles duty tonight?” The Beta asked after a few empty silences, while he moved toward the couch.

            His brows furrowed questioningly, failing to follow how they arrived at the topic or even what it was.

“Stiles is a virgin, virgins are dying, Stiles is gonna die unless one of us is watching him at night. Isn’t that how your mind works?”

“I volunteer for Stiles duty, after all, you two need your rest after all that’s happened lately,” Peter offered with a smile that refused to be anything but devious.

“Yeah, like we’re going to let a creep like you hang around Stiles while he’s sleeping.”

“I’ll do it,” Boyd offered, walking down the staircase, face set tightly.

“Are you sure?”

“Erica adored him. I’ll do it for her.”

“Want me to drive you?”

            He shook his head and pulled on a hoodie, flipping the hood up before walking out of the loft, apparently content to run. It didn’t feel quite right to leave the defense of his newest pack member to someone else, but he could hardly leave everyone in the loft without an Alpha to protect them either.

“I’m a little surprised you let him go like that. I thought you’d be chomping at the bit to watch your boyfriend while he slept.”

            He ignored the jab and stalked off towards his bed to sleep, muttering a goodnight to everyone in the building before crawling into bed. There was no way he was going to survive another year of this.

 

* * *

 

 

            Another person turns up dead, and another cake arrives at his door with the same message. The town is on high alert, the Sheriff threatens Chris Argent so severely that he welcomes Stiles into his home every night indefinitely, and Stiles in turn puts a full mountain ash perimeter around his house to protect his father from wolves while he’s gone. Allison apologizes to Boyd and swears to never turn her bow on him again unless he goes completely feral. For almost a week there are three things he can count on: cake, dead people, and Stiles’s weary smile whenever he sees him.

            On Wednesday he gets an apple pie, with ‘still not your fault’ written in the same handwriting, but with whipped cream instead. Unsurprisingly it’s also not poisoned. A person still dies, but when he sees Stiles he doesn’t smile. He knew this victim, she was a doctor who helped his mom during her treatment. His eyes darken when he’s sad, Derek learns, going from light and seeming to flash gold to deep and empty. He sincerely hopes it’s simply because his long eyelashes block the light so much better when they’re low in sorrow, because if it’s due to something else then Stiles is far more magical than he knows what to do with.

            He wears his leather jacket down to the station, nerves like a bare electrical wire and needing all the comfort he could manage. Something bad was on the verge of happening, the air was almost literally sparking with it.

“Come in and shut the door, Derek. How are you doing today?”

“People are still dying. I’m still helpless to stop it. Just another day.”

“Saving people in this town happens to be my job, son. There’s no reason to blame yourself for what’s happening.”

“All due respect, Sir, but the supernatural end of things is my jurisdiction, not yours. I’m the Alpha, I’m supposed to be able to protect my territory.”

“We have two options here, you can either stop blaming yourself for things that are not actually your job to take care of because no one will thank you or pay you for dealing with them, or you can make this sort of thing your actual job. The kind where people might thank you and you will definitely get paid.”

“I don’t understand,” he replied simply, knowing better to waste both their time with questioning expressions.

“I want you to become a deputy. You can work your own hours, sort of a show up when you can and help where you can, be on call for anything that might be supernatural so you can help me deal with it. I have a line of psychiatrists that owe me favors, one of them can write a letter of recommendation that you be allowed to come and go as you need to in order to help you get over your trauma.”

“I don’t have trauma.”

            It was an automatic response and he winced at how fake it sounded, how he didn’t even make an effort to convince the Sheriff that he wasn’t a walking poster child for PTSD and survivor’s guilt.

“Stiles knows.”

            His heart skipped a beat, but he waited for the other to elaborate, because there were so many possibilities. Maybe Stiles knew about his quiet feelings for the teen, or that he was still punishing himself for something someone else did seven years ago. Maybe he didn’t know the whole truth of the fire.

“About Kate Argent, how she used you. He put it together on his own, made me swear not to tell, but he couldn’t carry it by himself, and you shouldn’t have to either. Three people know now, if you want to make it four, I have plenty of numbers for you. She had no right, Derek, she was as sick and twisted as they come and I’ve been in this business for a long time. Sociopaths are exactly what we never knew we needed in the last place we’d expect, they slip under your guard and they strike where they know it’ll hurt the worst. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone, so I don’t have you at a disadvantage on painful secrets.

“When my wife had been in the hospital for a few months I hired a full-time babysitter, between seeing her and my job I couldn’t take care of Stiles. She was sweet, gentle, perfect with him. Other babysitters never lasted more than a week or two, he’s still hard to handle and he’s almost an adult, but he was so much more energetic back then. She was always available, punctual, never had an issue, even cleaned the house for me and baked cookies. Three months into her job she tried to kill Stiles with a kitchen knife, and at age ten he held a loaded gun pointed at her chest while half the station rushed to the house to arrest her after he made the call. Her boyfriend had been my first case, he killed her parents when they refused to let the two marry at age seventeen and thirty-two respectively. Turns out she helped him. She was exactly what I needed when I needed it, and I almost lost my son because of it. I didn’t have the excuse of being young like you did, it is my job to spot sociopaths and potential murders, and I still failed at every turn for so long. I think you respect me to some degree, so I hope you’ll actually hear me when I say: it’s not your fault, Derek.”

            It was silent, seconds dragging into a minute before he was certain he wasn’t actually going to lose control of himself and smash something at the thought of a young Stiles defending himself against a monster. Maybe that was part of the reason he didn’t seem keen on using guns, that kind of memory could definitely cause a person to swear off the weapon entirely.

“Yes, Sir,” he said finally, frowning.

“Whether you do go a therapist or not, my offer stands. We’re still shorthanded, I still have little to no knowledge of anything that might be going on in this town, and it might give people a better overall opinion of you. Before they start to wonder why so many teenagers live in your loft.”

“Did you get the bullets from Argent? Most things you’ll come in contact with at the moment will either by stopped by the iron, the wolfsbane, or the fact that it’s a bullet.”

“Yes, I did. Talked with him about taking care of my son, too, though I assume you already know that since Boyd hasn’t been over since our arrangement started.”

“How’d you do it?”

“The night you came over I had Stiles sit down and tell me everything that had happened in the last year in detail, with the promise that as long as he didn’t lie to me about anything that happened or anything that will happen, I wouldn’t send him off to live with his grandparents in Wisconsin. He told me about Gerard, and I informed Chris that as long as he protected my son, I wouldn’t force poor Allison to have to get used to a new high school again because I ran them out of town. Along with threatening to make her life hell the same way his father ruined one of the better moments in my son’s life by beating him in front of minors being tortured. We’re both fathers, we reached an understanding.”

“Good. I don’t think Stiles is in any danger so long as he keeps his status as a Spark secret, but at least we know he’s safe.”

“Now, let’s discuss that age difference.”

“Nothing to discuss.”

“I know you’re not likely to try anything with my underage son after what happened, but I can’t make the same guarantee that he won’t come onto you. I think you need to have a conversation about why you can’t reciprocate now, or ever if that’s what you need, even though you keep sending him mixed signals. My son isn’t stupid, he can tell that you have feelings for him just as well as I can. If you blow him off or snap he’s going to assume you actually hate him, withdraw from the pack, and probably lose his friendship with Scott as a result of tension with that Lahey kid. If you don’t treat this situation with the caution it warrants we’re all going to lose Stiles and that will honestly be somewhat your fault.”

“He dealt with being rejected by Lydia for years over and over, one more time by me-”

“Stop right there. Stiles is my son, I’ve seen him at his best and I’ve seen him at his worst. I know him better than anyone, though I hope one day he finds someone who renders me ignorant of him in comparison because most of the time I don’t get him and he deserves better than that. My son is about to break, Derek. He doesn’t talk to his car unless she breaks down, he doesn’t sing in the shower, he doesn’t make faces in the mirror anymore. Hell, he won’t even _look_ at himself in the mirror now. He spends time with Lydia because no matter what he tells everyone, he’s completely given up on convincing her to love him and he knows she at least is someone safe. You’re dangerous, Derek, the only reason he even speaks to you is because he trusts you not to hurt him. Use words and explain yourself or I will shoot you right here; I’ll be damned if I watch you destroy the only person I have left.”

“I’ll talk to him,” he answered, staring down at his hands.

“Good. Will you consider my offer?”

“I’ll take you up on it, as soon as the Alpha Pack is gone. I think some stability besides my pack might…do me some good.”

“I’m glad. Consider my other suggestion, when you’re ready to think about it.”

            He stood and shook the Sheriff’s hand, finally breathing normally once he left the building. Scowling as he got into the Camaro, he texted Stiles to come by the loft tomorrow after school so they could talk. In the meantime he needed to choose his words carefully. As much as Stiles might have had a crush on him, he wasn’t what the teen wanted and even if he was, it wasn’t right for him to leave Stiles wanting until he was eighteen.

            Finishing his pie in silence while the others slept, he smiled at the thought of Stiles nicknaming him ‘Deputy Derek’. Maybe there was something left to live for after all.

 

* * *

 

“Something’s wrong. Oh god, you can’t kick me out of the pack just because my dad threatened you not to compromise my virtue because we both know you won’t. 

“I’m not kicking you out of the pack,” he answered as he tried to convince Stiles to stop standing in the doorway and follow him into the main area of the loft with his eyes.

            It didn’t work.

“If I swear to never expel you from the pack, will you please come sit down? Because I won’t, ever. As long as you want to be here you’re welcome.”

“I’m going to hold you to that forever. So if you’re not getting rid of me, what did you want to talk about? By the way, a text that says nothing but ‘we need to talk, come to the loft after school tomorrow’ is terrifying and you should never send that to me again.”

“Stiles, I’m falling in love with you and it’s terrifying but I can’t have sex with you until you’re legal,” he replied quickly, pleased that at the very least he’d said it, even if it was far more blunt than anyone had a right to be.

            The other male’s mouth moved repeatedly as he tried to start a sentence and aborted on the first syllable, eyes wide and bright. He grinned, finally seeming to get his wits about him.

“Okay, I can work with that. You’re so lucky I love you for something other than your dick or that last part would be a total deal-breaker. Not that I don’t love your dick too, or at least I really liked the one I imagined. You’re uncircumcised, right? I figured that if you’re a born werewolf your healing factor would prevent circumcision.”

“I honestly didn’t want to know how much you’ve thought about my dick. Yes, Stiles, I’m uncircumcised, and what do you mean you can work with that? Work with what?” He pressed, exasperated but willing to give this conversation a try because apparently nothing was ruined yet, for some reason.

“I can deal with not losing my virginity until I’m eighteen. I’ve dealt pretty well the last seventeen years, what’s one more if I get to kiss you? Wait, I can still kiss you, right?”

“Yes,” he breathes out hastily, amends, “Yes, if you want to kiss me, you-”

            Lips smash over his and it’s messy and angle isn’t quite right, but he smiles a little into it and tilts his head until they slot together. The contact stays chaste, just surface movement as Stiles’s long fingers thread into his hair gently because he’s not sure if he can stop himself right now if it goes any further and Stiles probably feels about the same. He feels warm and safe, loved for the first time in years. His body is practically glowing with it. The feeling increases in intensity and his eyes snap open to realize that his chest is _literally glowing._

“Derek, don’t panic. It’s just the protection spell I put on you, nothing bad is happening,” his spark asserts, stepping away with his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Why is it doing this?”

“Because the protection spell is based on…Magic works on belief, on feelings. Protection spells are strongest when they’re reinforced with feelings of love, the belief that your love for that person can protect them from anything. Unrequited love is strong, but it’s even more powerful when it’s returned, as you might have guessed. I think this is just it…powering up. The glowing should go away soon, I think.”

            Halfway through a nod something clicked, and the thought punched him in the gut as soon as it took hold.

“Your first attempt at a protection spell backfired because you didn’t love yourself enough, didn’t it? Stiles, tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong,” he replied, the wetness in his eyes telling the werewolf he was lying just as well as his heart did.

“I’m sorry, Stiles.”

The teen’s eyes really do flash gold and he starts, but he doesn’t have time to think about it because Stiles is screaming, “This isn’t your fucking _fault_! Derek fucking Hale does not control the universe, you don’t get to take the goddamn blame for literally everything! You wanna fucking know why I hate myself sometimes, why I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror? It’s because I made the decision to lie to my dad for a year, because I’m partially responsible for Scott being a werewolf, because I couldn’t even fucking save Erica and she was the only one who ever treated me like I was the hero instead of the sidekick. The _one person_ , and I couldn’t even save her. My dad puts on a brave face, but I know he’s drinking when I’m not home and I put him in this position. I’m not a hero, I’m not even a sidekick, I’m a fucking damsel in distress preventing everyone else from moving forward with their storyline. The people I love are hurting and in danger and there is nothing I can do about it and I caused half of it, and I _hate myself for it._ ”

            He’s crying now, tears streaming down his face while his heart stutters and he heaves air in and out of his lungs painfully. Cautiously closing the distance between them, he frames the teen’s face and doesn’t attempt to wipe the tears away, just to hold him there.

“Stiles. This isn’t a comic book or a fairy tale. There are no heroes, no sidekicks, and no damsels whether they’re in distress or not. Everything you just mentioned is no more your fault than Kate burning my family to death was. You had to lie to your dad because my family made it almost impossible to tell the truth and be believed, Scott got bit because Peter bit him, Erica died because the Alphas killed her, your dad drinks because that’s how he’s coping with his job. Don’t hurt yourself because of things other people do. If I try not to, will you do the same?”

“Together?” He sniffed, eyes searching.

“Together.”

“I can do that. We can do that,” he smirked, “I kin do zat.”

“Okay, Chekov, Pavel Andreievich.”

“Hey, it’s perfect, I’m a hyperactive genius who just happens to be sewenteen. Also, what the hell, you’ve seen the first reboot movie?”

“I was in New York in 2009, not under a rock.”

“Can I…Can I kiss you again?”

“No,” he answered, watching as Stiles’s face fell.

            Pulling him back in, he initiated this kiss, the other shoving at him playfully when he got why Derek refused him. There were a lot of things they needed to address, like whether Stiles was ever going to get professional help for his issues or if talking about it was really enough, or why the hell his eyes changed colors when he experienced an intense emotion. But for the moment, he was content to carefully guide them to the bed in the corner of the room and stop just before falling back into it.

“I was hoping you could stay the night,” he explained.

“You’re inviting me to cuddle with you all night, aren’t you? Come on, tell me you’re inviting me to cuddle. Use your words, Derek, if you love me at all-”

“I’m inviting you to cuddle with me all night, now shut the hell up and take your pants off,” he growled.

“Wow, okay, celibacy is going to be impossible if you talk to me like that, I’m just gonna…leave my pants on for a few more hours.”

“Stiles, your boner isn’t going to scare me away from this relationship.”

“Speaking of, can I refer to you as my boyfriend now? Are you going to do romantic things? Can we at least tell the pack so maybe Peter stops giving me bad-touch vibes all the time? Can we go on dates?”

“Yes, maybe, yes we can but he’s only doing it because he knows I have feelings so that part isn’t going to stop, and when we’re not in mortal danger from two different groups at once.”

“You really do listen to me. Normally Scott tunes me out after the second or third straight sentence.”

“Scott is an idiot when it comes to you.”

“That modifier there was very civil of you. I’ll make an actual human out of you yet, sourwolf.”

“Please come up with a better pet name than that, if you must call me a pet name.”

“Okay, loverwolf,” he sniped back as he shucked his jeans off with the speed of someone who was incredibly self-conscious and just wanted to get it over with.

            Derek was going to cry tears of despair, he really was, he just needed to finish fighting back a smile first. This wasn’t going to be easy, this was going to hurt, but maybe it could work. Pulling his shirt and pants off disinterestedly, he could smell arousal as soon as Stiles turned to look at him in nothing but his boxer briefs. It didn’t bother him, so long as he wasn’t the one taking advantage of a teenager everything was fine. It wasn’t even a reaction he was unused to, he’d fucked plenty of men and women while in New York and even the most detached one-night-stands were turned on looking at him. Maybe it made his skin crawl a little that he was forcing someone he cared about into celibacy, but it was so much better than the alternative. They could work on it, together.

“Wow, even if you are prickly as hell, how were you single? Like I could marry your torso right now and we’ve only just met.”

He couldn’t help himself, he chuckled, “Funny, I’ve known your mouth for a year and I still think I could live with it for the rest of my life.”

            That mouth fluttered through a variety of words before settling on pursing down and saying nothing, eyes glittering with a tangible sort of happiness. Definitely needed to talk about that in the morning. Stiles shot off a text to both Chris and his father to inform them he’d be staying over at the loft, then smiled at him shyly.

            They laid down in the queen-sized bed and Stiles immediately draped himself over Derek’s back when he rolled over, claiming the role of big spoon without words. It was nice, he liked being in contact with the teen without feeling like he was holding him here against his will. It had been a decade and a half since he’d been held by someone who really loved him, and if that wasn’t the saddest fucking thing he didn’t know what was.

“Go to sleep, loverwolf, you’re thinking too loud.”

“I have so many regrets about that pet name.”

A hand cards through his hair before Stiles speaks again, “We can talk about this in the morning. For now, sleep.”

            And they do.

 

* * *

 

            Stiles is late for school, so they don’t get to talk about it, or the fact that Stiles is probably a lot stronger than anyone gives him credit for. Derek briefly considers bringing up his flashing eyes with Deaton before he brought it to his boyfriend’s attention, but didn’t feel like making his first actual relationship where both people truly cared for each other last only a day. Isaac congratulates him on finally getting over himself before letting him know Stiles is apparently having a bad day, anxiety rolling off him in waves. His tendency to fear the worst when he thought no one was looking hasn’t been fixed overnight, and he told Scott he was worried that Derek was only trying the whole relationship thing because the Sheriff pressured him into it.

            Shaking his head, he got dressed, leaving the jacket behind in favor of not cooking to death on another hundred-degree day. He chose a black sleeveless shirt, one of Stiles’s favorite shirts if the look in his eyes when the older man wore it was any indication. Arriving at the high school ten minutes before classes let out, he parked the Camaro and went to lean on Stiles’s Jeep, fully aware what kind of figure he cut in sunglasses and tight jeans. It genuinely made him angry that everyone seemed to ignore Stiles because he was talkative and hard to follow, he knew the teen had serious self-esteem issues to work through and while having a hot boyfriend wasn’t a fix for them, once people saw them together they might form a different opinion of him. Maybe once everyone else figured out that there was something about Stiles so special that he could convince a guy who looked like Derek to date him, Stiles would start seeing those qualities in himself. It couldn’t hurt.

            Slowly people started filtering out, almost everyone noticing him since the Jeep was parked in the first row, probably taking the spot of someone who left in the morning. One girl fell down the steps while staring at him, and he could smell the arousal and hear the quickened heartbeats. It was amusing, in a twisted way. He latched onto the beat of Stiles’s heart as soon as he tried, frowning when he could hear the stress the teen was carrying, the pace of it fast even for him.

_“I don’t know dude, my dad would totally force Derek to start dating me if he thought we might be fucking. Think about how easy it would be to pin all these murders on him. There’s gotta be a reason Derek only said anything after he met with my dad.”_

            They cleared the building and he glanced away from Scott’s face, gaze locking onto Derek immediately. His eyes widened and flashed, mouth opening and doing the fish impression he was getting a lot of practice at lately. Exhibiting all the symptoms of arousal, he tripped a little when the Alpha grinned wolfishly and pushed off the vehicle, pulling his shades off and tucking them into his collar. Walking up to him and pressing their lips together, he wound his fingers in brown hair and rested a gentle hand over the healing injury over the teen’s heart.

“Your dad just told me to get my shit together and stop sending mixed signals. You really think a lie is enough to increase the strength of a protection spell?” He mumbled against Stiles’s lips in between kisses.

“Well magic is based on belief.”

“Stiles. I love you. Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” he hissed with conviction, the faith he had in the words coming out of the werewolf’s mouth terrifying.

“Good. Come to the loft with me?”

            Stiles nodded enthusiastically and bid Scott goodbye as he laced their fingers together and pulled the teen toward the Camaro. Half the student body had stopped and were either taking video, snapping photos, or in the process of sending earlier photos to friends as proof that this was something that actually happened.

“I can’t believe you just made out with me in front of everyone. I can’t believe you’d actually acknowledge that you know me, much less that you’re with me.”

“Start believing, then, because it’s going to keep happening. You’re amazing, Stiles, and everyone around you is too shallow and stupid to realize that.”

“Isn’t that a good thing, though? You don’t have to compete or get jealous.”

“You deserve to have people fighting over you, Stiles. People who are better than me. I wouldn’t let them win, but you deserve them.”

“I wouldn’t want them to win, anyway. I’m a one wolf kind of guy.”

“I thought you only wanted to marry my torso,” he replied easily, turning the car on and peeling out of the parking lot.

“I kind of assumed it was a package deal, like you buy two things you get them cheaper than separately. Not saying I’d necessarily purchase your sass if it was by itself, but if it comes in a set with your torso I can totally deal.”

“I’m glad you think the only two things I have going for me are my sass and torso, and one of them isn’t even very good.”

“Well, okay, you do have some pretty great eyes. And your cheekbones could cut diamonds. There are greek gods that want your jawline. Have I mentioned that angels weep when you wear tight jeans? But you want to know my favorite part of you?”

“If you say my sparkling personality I swear.”

“Your smile. Because it looks great on you, and it means you’re happy, or at least trying to be. Even if I’m not the one who puts it there, I love your smile.”

“That’s incredibly cheesy…but sweet. I shouldn’t expect any less out of you.”

“We’ve got some romance novel-level shit going on here with your body and my…plainness, it’s straight out of a bodice-ripper except we’re not having sex. So I don’t know why you’re expecting good dialogue. You’re reading this for the porn, aren’t you? Oh, wait, I forgot you were a romantic. You’re totally reading this for the awesome chemistry between the two main characters. I get it, they’re beautiful together, a super hot guy and a totally average guy, it’s a fantastic dichotomy.”

“As soon as you turn eighteen I’m going to fuck you so hard you can’t even pronounce the word average. And I’ll keep fucking you after that until you promise to never describe yourself as plain again. You’re beautiful, Stiles.”

“Woah, you are not allowed to say shit like that if I have to wait eleven months for anything to happen. I will tell my dad to put an ordinance out on that shit if I have to. If only because I want to see you in handcuffs.”

            He slammed the brakes a little too hard at the upcoming stop light and Stiles bounced against his seat belt, grinning even as he settled back in for catching Derek off guard. The Alpha knew he was blushing, but he could hardly be blamed for the reaction. That was something he was totally on board with, so long as he wasn’t strung up in a basement. He absolutely needed to stop thinking about long fingers doing terrible things to him until he begged right now or he might very well lose control.

“So, I was doing more research last night. It’s not witches, I don’t think. I’ve found the pattern, I figured it out when it wasn’t just virgins dying, though the three-fold death was a pretty good clue too. It’s Celtic, like a druid. I don’t know what the ritual is for, but it’s fucking powerful as shit. Two more healers, then three druids, or magic-users, will be sacrificed. There’s…” He stopped, biting his lip.

“Just tell me, Stiles.”

“There’s a final sacrifice, just the one. A capstone sacrifice, if you will, the cherry on top. It’s one person that is all four things. A virgin, a soldier, a healer, and a druid, all in one.”

“Do we know anyone who fits that description?”

“I’m looking into it,” he answered, heart skipping.

“Tell me the truth.”

“Do you trust me, Derek?”

He swallowed, considering it for a moment, “As much as I can afford to.”

“Then just…trust me to tell you if and when it becomes relevant. This one thing, Derek. This one tiny thing.”

            Nodding, he filtered through all the people he knew of in Beacon Hills and came up blank on at least one category out of the four. Stiles was three out of the four, but he wasn’t a soldier, so at least he was safe.

“We need to protect Melissa McCall, don’t we? You said healers were the current target.”

“I told Scott already, but I get the feeling she won’t be in danger. There’s no way the druid doesn’t know about the werewolves, it’s a magic thing, and I don’t know who would be stupid enough to directly incite the pack’s wrath.”

“Scott isn’t pack.”

“I’m working on it. God, you’re both so difficult about this. Sometimes I wish I’d let Peter bite me and killed him myself, taken his alpha power and got you two morons to work together and made us all one big happy family. Then you could both kill one of the alphas in the alpha pack and we could be a pack of Alphas that didn’t go around killing their betas and we could all share our power and insight so you wouldn’t rush into things, Scott wouldn’t come up with stupid fucking plans, and I wouldn’t end up stumbling right into a trap. Peace and harmony.”

“Don’t.”

            He couldn’t finish what he wanted to say, heart rate erratic and thundering in his ears as he had what could be best described as a panic attack, because Stiles was talking about almost exactly what he wanted, exactly what he’d been so convinced he could never have. Glad the car was parked in front of the loft, he tried to breathe and hide it, failing miserably enough that suddenly Stiles was in his lap.

“Derek, breathe with me, okay? You’re fine, I’m fine, we’re both gonna be okay. I trust you, I know you can do this. Just breathe, that’s all I need you to do. I believe in you.”

            The last sentence sent him over the edge, vision tunneling just before he blacked out.

 

* * *

 

“Please, Derek, just wake up. Open those stupid eyes of yours that are six different colors at once and scowl at me or something. Peter’s gonna sexually assault me any moment, I’m actually genuinely concerned right now.”

            Struggling to regain consciousness, he floated near it, listening to the two other heartbeats in the room and trying to remember how to work his eyes.

“I would never dream of it, not while your dear lover was asleep.”

“Yeah, you better not.”

“However, my nephew is coming around.”

“Get away from me, stop, get away getawaygetaway _getaway,_ ” he shrieked, screaming the words when Peter grabbed his arm.

            Snapping awake, he was half a second away from enough coherency to leap at his uncle when Stiles threw a fireball into his face, sending him staggering back before he dropped to the floor to roll the fire out. He was physically shaking, heart threatening to give out as his blood pressure doubled, but if the way he looked at his hands in horror was any indication it wasn’t from fear of Peter, but what he’d just done.

“Peter, get out. Don’t come back until I call you.”

            Appearing to be cowed into obedience by being lit on fire, the beta beat a hasty retreat, leaving them alone in the loft. Pulling Stiles over him, he held the quaking teen tight until his body relaxed completely.

“You sure we need him?”

“Not so sure anymore.”

“We should talk about it, with Scott. As a team. Team Derek n’ Stiles n’ Scott, it’ll be good.”

“Stiles…You can’t do this to me.”

“Do what? Why did you have a panic attack earlier?”

“You can’t talk about us all being one pack working together like it’s something I can actually have. It won’t work, Scott won’t like it, you won’t like either of us after you’ve had to mediate two pack leaders, and I’ll end up losing you.”

“Hey, dude, maybe you should fucking try something before deciding it’s going to fail. How’s this, next time we go up against the Alpha pack, or when we get to the druid, all of us work together. The whole extended pack. As one third of this leadership panel I motion that you fucking listen to me for once.”

“I’m still the Alpha.”

“And I’m the Alpha’s mate so I get a say,” he hissed, eyes flashing before narrowing in confusion when he suddenly found his boyfriend on the other side of the room.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You honestly think I don’t know just as much about werewolf culture as you do, loverwolf? Werewolves mate for life, especially Alphas, and it’s a stronger tie than it is with normal people because of the pack bond. That’s why Scott is still pining after Allison even after she told him it wasn’t going to happen, though they have some freaky threeway with Isaac going on and that’s great if it works for them but I’m seriously confused by it. But whatever, I know exactly what I’m fucking saying. I’m young and I may be a genius but I’m still an idiot, but if you want forever then for the moment I want it too. I can’t promise you eternity, Derek, because we’re humans, not wolves, but I want to be there with you on the good days and on the days when the world literally crumbles around us because I think together we can manage to pull each other out of the rubble. I love you, Derek. You want proof, you want concrete fucking proof of how serious I am right now?”

            He didn’t dare move from his place near the windows, neither shaking his head nor nodding.

“You trust me, but I don’t know if you trust that I love you. So stand still, and don’t blink. I’ll prove it to you.”

            And he hurled a fireball at him. It was fast, only someone with werewolf speed could have dodged it, but he overrode every survival instinct he had and stood completely still. It broke over a forcefield that glistened gold around him without him ever feeling the heat, leaving a rounded scorch mark on one of the far panes of glass. Looking down at the fading glow from his chest, he understood.

“I love you enough that fire can’t hurt you anymore. If I have my way none of your pack will ever burn, or bleed, or hurt, or die. Never again. I’m going to protect everyone you love when you can’t.”

“Everyone but yourself, Stiles. Everyone but the one person I can’t do any of this without.”

“Fuck you, Derek! You can totally do all of this shit without me! The whole goddamn point of a relationship is that two people can function separately but do better together. You managed to put this pack together without my help, and even if it fell apart because life has a hateboner for you, you could put it back together if you stopped being a martyr and realized that someone not liking you is not an unchangeable thing! Isaac wants to be Scott’s beta because you’re not trying hard enough, because you think everything is your responsibility and you won’t give him the fucking guidance he needs. You can do this on your own but you’re better with help, just like every other fucking living thing on this planet. Let me help, Derek.”

“Put a protection spell on yourself, then I’ll let you make decisions as an Alpha’s mate. Until then, drop the whole idea.”

“Please don’t push me away, Derek. Yeah, maybe I’m a little broken, but I’m coping. I can’t lose everyone. Not when I’m finally useful for something.”

            He felt his soul creaking under the weight of the knowledge that Stiles only thought anyone wanted him around because he could be useful. Something was bound to give out at some point, but he braced himself.

“I don’t need you to be useful, Stiles, I just need you to be safe.”

“Can’t I be both? I’ve survived Peter, I’ve survived Jackson, I’ve survived Gerard, and so far I’ve survived the Alpha pack and the Darach. What the hell makes you think I won’t survive making a goddamn pack decision without my own personal protection bubble? I believe the pack will protect me, and even with no focus on the idea and no control over my power, that’s proven true again and again. If you keep pushing me away like this, that belief fades, and all the love I could muster for myself will never amount to the protection my belief in you and your pack provides me. You really think I survived this long because of luck? That was bullshit I fed Dad to keep him from getting up in arms about ‘what if the pack’s not there or can’t help’ because I fucking know what happens, I get kidnapped and assaulted.”

“If the Alphas find out how powerful you are, if they know what you are to me, they will kill you without hesitation if they can’t take you for their own. Human or not, you’re a threat to them.”

“All the more reason to keep me close and let the three of us work together to make decisions so that maybe I’ll still be fucking alive by next month. Did you somehow miss the part where I’m safer by your side than away, because I thought I was very clear that horrible shit only happens to me when I get pushed out of pack business. Wait, is this just your way of telling me you don’t want me to be your mate?”

“No, Stiles, it’s not. I want that, every Alpha wants that, and I want it more than most because I need something real in my life. But you’re young, if I base my entire pack’s power structure around you and you don’t want me anymore in two years when you graduate? I won’t recover.”

“Yes, you will, because you’ll have a fucking pack that loves you, you giant moron. Even if I stopped wanting to be your boyfriend, I would be stuck with this pack because for some goddamn reason I care about each and every person in it, even Cora who has never spoken a word to me, and Peter who just acted like he was fully intending to violate me to get a rise out of you. I know I don’t look it, but Lydia and I are tied for Valedictorian of our class and even though I could get a full ride almost anywhere by writing some sob story about how I watched my mom die slowly over the course of a year, struggled with my ADHD, and had to carry all my friends through school while everyone was being murdered around us, all I want is to get into a good university here in California so I can stay near the pack. I’ve already started looking into dorm suites large enough for the whole pack to crash in if they need to and talked to Danny about the possibility of his getting me that room by myself if Lydia won’t go to the same place as me. I love all you stupid furry assholes and I’m not going to be thrown out on my ass just because you’re worried I’m going to get killed.”

“I won’t be responsible for your death.”

“Then don’t fucking put your hand through my chest and rip my heart out! If someone else kills me to get to you, newsflash, it’s still their fucking fault I died! Didn’t we talk about this? Didn’t you say you’d try if I did? Because I’m trying so hard not to think that you refusing to acknowledge that I have something to contribute to the stability of the pack more than my continued existence is my fault.”

            He frowned, looking down and letting his cracking reserve sigh into dust. Maybe this one time he could manage to make things work out right. With help this good, even he couldn’t possibly fuck it up, right?

“Okay. The next time we need a plan of action, all three of us will work on it together. In the meantime, try to work on that protection spell.”

“Thank you, Derek,” he whispered reverently as he walked over to cup Derek’s face in his hands and kiss him eagerly.

            This boy would worship him, if only the Alpha let him. What he was, molten eyes and boundless energy and intelligence, was so much more rare and valuable than anything Derek could ever pretend to be, and yet he would lay his precious life down for his Alpha. His mate, if the older man just allowed it. He was far from perfect, a little socially awkward, always getting into trouble, and generally unable to tell what grace was if it literally bit him on the ass, but he was more than Derek deserved. He would have made a beautiful Alpha if Peter had bitten him instead of Scott. It was unlikely he would become a werewolf now that he’d honed his abilities, Sparks were difficult to turn because the magic in them burned out the infection before it could take hold, it took the victim being nearly dead before the bite would take, and even then it had the same chance of failure as the bite normally did. If the Alpha pack ended up wanting him they would probably leave him human to prevent themselves from accidentally killing an incredible asset.

“Your eyes, they flash gold when you experience an intense emotion, and that’s not normal for any Spark I’ve heard of.”

“You’re not just exaggerating the color of my eyes because you’re in love with me, right? Because they do have some like, goldish accents.”

“Like a beta’s eyes, except metallic.”

“That’s uh. No, not something a normal Spark does that I know of. I need to talk to Deaton about it. What kind of emotions, just any of them?”

            He nodded, running his hand down the individual vertebra of Stiles’s fragile spine.

“I’ll deal with it later. For now, how about we call Scott over and talk about plans for the Alpha pack and the Darach? Be proactive before one of us, IE me, dies, hm?” He hummed, knowing he’d just successfully baited his lover and complete unrepentant about it.

“If he’ll come.”

“I’ll just tell him we’re worried his mom is going to die. I’m not a good person, Derek,” Stiles added at the look, as if he was stating the obvious.

            Stiles was one of the better people he knew, though that didn’t stop him from being a comparatively bad person to the general population, he supposed. Maybe Derek only attracted assholes, it would make sense.

“Scott, hey buddy, I think I have some idea of what we’re up against and what kind of people the next targets are going to be. Healers, two more are going to die in the next two days. Yeah dude, that includes your mom, she’s a nurse. She knows about all this nonsense, is she off today? Good, bring her and your furry ass over to the loft and we’ll talk things over with Derek,” a pause, “Yeah, dude, I actually give no fucks about the fact that Derek made you tell the truth about Allison’s mom because if you recall she went off the deep end because she thought that Derek attacked her mom for no reason, so really as sweet as what you attempted to do was it pretty much fucked all of us over and actually seriously compromised your girlfriend’s mental health so maybe you don’t get to hold that against him. This is just one of many examples of what happens when you don’t share with the class, so maybe we should start all working together like the family of freaks we are before your mom dies because you’re afraid of the big bad wolf.”

            He hummed in assent a few more times, and if Derek wanted he could listen in to what Scott was saying, but he didn’t care to. Ending the call, he smiled crookedly and informed his Alpha that Scott and Melissa were on their way now. It would be a bit awkward talking to the nurse after the whole Police Department debacle, but at least he could honestly say he wasn’t responsible for her son’s transformation.

“Ground rules, don’t be an asshole, don’t just accept what either of us says or assume you’re right when you suggest something, and it takes unanimous agreement for anyone to go through with the plan. If anyone goes through with the plan without reaching total assent, whoever is not in a relationship with that person chews them the fuck out and/or kicks their ass.”

“Don’t we need Scott to agree on these ground rules?”

            Stiles blinked and squinted at him as if trying to gauge whether he was being a smartass or actually understood the rules of engagement for their proposed three-leader group.

“Yeah, we do. See, you’re already succeeding. And you said this couldn’t work, no faith in me.”

            They ended up making out on the couch lazily while they waited for the others to arrive, Stiles taking the initiative to push his tongue into Derek’s mouth. He kissed with the same inquisitiveness that got him into this whole mess, exploring every surface he could get his tongue to reach, going so far as to tip his boyfriend’s head back just to dip in further. He could only imagine the amount of care he’d put into exploring every inch of the werewolf’s body with his fingers and mouth. Dropping the train of thought before he put bruises on Stiles’s hips through his shirts, he caught the sound of Melissa’s car pulling up toward the loft and slowly extricated the other from him.

“They’re almost here,” he explained, trying to ignore how wrecked the brunet looked with his lips swollen and face slightly flushed.

“You’re uh…Anyone ever tell you you’re the sexiest thing on two legs or four?”

“Actually no, that last part is a new one and now I’m slightly concerned about your potential beastiality kink.”

“Dude, don’t fucking go there, it was a wolf joke, don’t you even try and pin that shit on me.”

“Oh, it was just a joke?” He returned meaningfully, having been joking himself.

“Oh my god you’re such an asshole. You are lucky you’re just amazingly hot or I’d be really mad at you right now.”

“Bless my good looks for my continued safety,” he deadpanned, quirking an eyebrow.

“One day I’m going to be stronger than you, just watch.”

            Whatever reply he might have come up with was pushed the wayside as the mother and son team started up the stairs, prompting him to get up and open the door for them. Melissa was holding the cake that had been delivered while he and Stiles were kissing, and he accepted it with a small smile and a nod toward Scott before stepping aside to let them in.

“Why am I even here? My son told me my life was in danger but that his hyperactive friend was the only one with an explanation why. No offense Stiles, you’re fine the way you are,” she added for his benefit.

“Thanks, Mrs. McCall. There’s a magic user that’s sacrificing people, the current people slated to die are healers. Did you hear about Dr. Mathiss? She was the first of the three healers to die, and we’re somewhat concerned you might be next, or might be hurt if you try to stop the killer.”

“Your heart tells me you’re not that worried about my mom.”

“Scott, my heart is also telling me I have been your best friend for like thirteen years so believe me when I tell you that there is a small chance someone’s going to kill your mom and it’s a sure thing that someone is going to kill two of her coworkers so maybe she would like to hear what I have to say.”

“Scott’s mom would totally like to know about dying coworkers. Dr. Mathiss was a great woman to work with and she had a seven year-old daughter she left behind. Scott, I don’t want to watch the Sheriff give the news to any more children that their parents are dead because of some nutjob, so you’re going to work with Derek and his pack regardless of your personal issues with it unless you want to be the one to watch a little girl scream and cry for four hours before she finally gets into the car with her aunt. Got it?”

            Scott blanched and nodded sheepishly and Derek could hardly blame him, his mother was frightening when she needed to be. He was glad to have her on his side, at least for now. They moved to the sitting area, Melissa and Derek taking the two armchairs while Stiles and Scott sat on the couch. He set the cake down on the end table, content to ignore it for now.

“It would probably be best if you explained it from the start, Stiles,” Derek suggested, more than patient enough to wait while everyone was caught up.

            He drifted on the cadence of Stiles’s words, not particularly needing to listen closely to a story he already knew. Instead he watched the faces of the others, Melissa’s intent and Scott’s slightly annoyed, but he made an attempt to hide it. Maybe if he made it clear that Scott was going to be an equal part in the pack, not just a beta but another Alpha, he’d stop fighting against it so hard. It was possible Stiles could convince Lydia to join, so long as she could live with Peter or they decided to kill him, and with her would come Allison and that Danny kid he once got stuck stripping for. With Allison would come Chris and if Jackson ever convinced his parents to move back he would have every person that the arrogant teen cared about already, it wouldn’t be a push to get him back into the pack. If he made a better effort with Boyd and Isaac he could convince them to stay, Isaac especially if Scott was on board. The fact that it could work was just as terrifying as the idea that it wouldn’t.

“So you want all three of us to act as leaders? You really think Derek can give up his power like that, he’s an Alpha, Stiles.”

“Derek is right here, and yes, he can. All I really want is to keep the pack, and by extension, Beacon Hills, safe. Most Alphas with a pack have seconds they trust, and a pack our size usually has a mated pair at the head of it, but it’s a little early to ask something like that of Stiles.”

“Who is completely okay with the idea and would very much like it but it’s not like his opinion matters,” the Spark muttered, glaring at him.

“So sharing power in a three way with an Alpha, a Beta, and a human is really possible?” Scott asked, still a bit slow on the uptake, or maybe needing reassurance that he was hearing everything right.

“Once we take down the Alpha pack there’s a good chance you won’t be just a Beta anymore, Scotty, but yeah, that’s the gist of it and if anyone can manage it, we can. Come on, don’t you want to have all of us together? Derek, you, me, Isaac, Boyd, Cora, Allison, Lydia, your mom, my dad, Chris Argent, and maybe Danny."

Scott’s reticence was fading fast, “It…would be a good way to keep everyone safe. But I don’t take orders!”

“The whole point of the three leader system is that none of the “Alphas” take orders, Scott. We agree, and then move forward. And of course the Betas and humans get input too, but ultimately the decisions are ours,” Stiles explained further, hope in his eyes.

“It would get Allison and her dad to trust you more,” Derek offered, because he had to at least try or Stiles would yell at him.

“Okay, I’ll try it. First thing we should do is put Danny as pack to a vote. I vote yes, he’s saved our asses without knowing it and he’s a good guy.”

“I second,” Derek replied, surprising everyone including himself, but Danny was a good idea.

            It would be up to him whether he remained human or became a werewolf, but the others seemed to like him quite a lot, and in his movements about the city he’d never heard anyone say a single bad thing about him. The teen had to be at least charming if he managed to convince everyone he was a good guy and with the possible exception of Lydia, charming was something they were sorely lacking.

“I agree too, it’s settled, we’ll ask him as soon as we can. Now, let’s talk about how we’re going to get the others to join in.”

“You should ask Lydia. Everyone else will follow her, and right now you’re her best friend other than Allison,” Scott answered, glancing at Derek as if daring him to object.

“Alright, sounds good to me, Derek?”

“If she gives us killing Peter as an ultimatum we’ll have to be ready to consider it. The benefits do outweigh the losses, but I don’t want us to make a rash decision.”

“Okay, sorry to interrupt, but are you seriously talking about killing Peter Hale just because a teenage girl tells you to?” Melissa stopped them, incredulous.

“He killed my sister in cold blood to take her power, turned your son, murdered all those people last year, tried to kill Lydia, kidnapped Stiles, and tried to kill me twice. Then when I killed him, he possessed Lydia and forced her to drug half the town’s kids, kidnap me, and use my blood to resurrect him,” the Alpha explained carefully.

“Oh,” she said, continuing after a minute, “You know, never mind. I rescind any arguments about the murder of Peter Hale, so long as you or Chris are the ones who do it because I won’t have teenagers get his blood on their hands.”

“I’ll be sure it’s one of us, or the Sheriff if he keeps going after Stiles.”

“So, now that the pack business is dealt with, how are we going to protect the doctors and nurses from becoming sacrifices?”

            They eventually settled on Stiles presenting the idea to the FBI, suggesting that the serial killer was a mythology buff. Seven deaths in the right pattern was definitely enough to make a case for them, but Stiles would need to remain within view of security cameras for the next two days to ensure that if the cops failed to protect these people, he wasn’t a suspect. He called up his father and arranged to help the still-undermanned station file paperwork, since there was CCTV set up in every corner that Danny could easily triple the encryption to so no one could knock it out. With only about six hours before the killer’s preferred time to strike, they needed to move quickly, agreeing on the plan and splitting up. Melissa was taking Stiles to the station, able to corroborate the virgin part of the story because she had to ask questions about sexual activity every time one of those poor kids came in for a checkup, Scott and Derek were going to Danny’s house to talk to him about becoming Pack while informing the current members what was happening.

“I’m doing this for Stiles,” Scott felt the need to remind him from the passenger seat.

“So am I.”

“You’re not taking advantage of him, are you, because if you are-”

“Do you really think his father would be okay with us being together if we were having sex? Last I checked he was the Sheriff.”

“I just…He’s my best friend, okay.”

“I know he’ll never bring this up with you, so I will. You only care that he’s getting hurt when it’s me doing it.”

“What do you mean, Derek?”

“Last year, he got kidnapped off the lacrosse field by Gerard and beaten bloody, and he still showed up and saved all of us from the Kanima. Yet you never even asked him why his face was busted and he reeked of pain, you just went running off with Allison again. If this leadership triangle is going to work, we’re all going to need to care about each other. I know asking you to give a damn about me is stretching it at this point, but I really need you to pay more attention to Stiles.”

“I wasn’t…I haven’t been…” Scott looked down at his hands, the stench of guilt heavy in the air.

“You’re still young, Scott, and I think you’re better than that. All of you have had a lot to carry, more than you should. I know how it is, to be a kid and have so much more than you can handle thrust on you, and I didn’t handle it well and I want to see the Pack do better.”

            It was the closest he’d come to admitting to himself or anyone that he didn’t necessarily need to punish himself for what Kate did, and he imagined that Stiles would be proud of him if he knew. He liked the idea.

“I need to apologize to Stiles,” he said, crooked jaw set in a hard line, “And I _will_ do better next time. With Allison it was just…So easy to forget that other people were getting hurt, that there were other people I needed to care about too.”

“Stiles will forgive you. Stiles doesn’t even blame you, he assumes it’s his fault.”

“Stiles is an idiot when it comes to himself.”

“Finally we agree on something,” he answered, feeling something inside him fitting into place.

“What will you do if the Alphas threaten Stiles?”

“The same thing you would, fight them if I could, get the pack together and protect him if I couldn’t. Do you think Deaton would consider becoming Pack? We really need him to keep helping Stiles grow from a magic standpoint, I think he’s much more powerful than anyone really expected and I’m concerned he may lose control of himself.”

“Think he could get strong enough to kill an Alpha if he had to?”

“Maybe one, if they went one-on-one and he got the first hit in. Even with magic, he’s still just human. He’s going to be furious with me for telling you this, but he can’t cast a protection spell on himself, he doesn’t love himself enough. Half the reason he’s still alive is because he believes the pack will protect him, but he can’t use his magic defensively on himself.”

“What if he used feelings from the pack to cast the protection spell? What if he believed the pack’s love for him could protect him even if we weren’t physically taking his hits for him? Would that work?”

            Feeling a smile spread on his face, he realized that yes, that could absolutely work. He knew that before he recognized Stiles as pack he was still abnormally quick to protect the teen, pushing him out of the way or jumping in front of him. If his belief could influence other people without him even trying, there was no way other people’s influence couldn’t also be used to protect him. 

“I’m sure you’ve never heard this before, but, Scott McCall, you are a genius.”

“Stiles was right, you do have a sense of humor,” he replied, genuinely awed.

“One of my vaguely okay qualities is my sass, according to him.”

“If Stiles ever seriously described any of your qualities as vaguely okay I think I would cry from relief. One time he got drunk, it was…it was while he was still hurt, actually, I think that he got drunk instead of punching me for never asking who broke his face. But he was hosed and he just made this list of all the great things about you, and a few things that made him furious, but mostly it was just how awesome you are. And I somewhat listened, because he sat through my episodes where I couldn’t start a sentence without ‘Allison’. It was just…I can’t believe he tolerated me if I sounded like that all the time.”

“Stiles is loyal.”

“Is that why you’re dating him?”

He gripped the steering wheel, then supposed it might just be an honest question and loosened up with some effort, “No, I’m dating him because I love him.”

“Oh,” he said, looking up, “Oh. He’s your mate, isn’t he? The Alpha’s mate. Deaton told me about it once before, mating, how important finding a mate is for an Alpha. He said it’s not unheard of for a werewolf to have multiple mates, just unusual for them to all get along without killing each other. And that the Alpha’s mate was the strongest position in the pack, because they were the only ones who could get the Alpha to submit.”

“Multiple mates? You, Allison, and Isaac, right? He’s right, polyamory isn’t completely unheard of, but it’s hard for werewolves to find balance with their possessive side. If you or Isaac become an Alpha it’ll be more difficult.”

“Well…Not really. Allison is kind of, she’s…uh, the ‘Alpha’ of the relationship, which is sort of still in the beginning stages of none of us being sure this is going to work. Wow, this is so awkward.”

“At least you know it won’t be a problem. And…Isaac needs a lot of love. Maybe more than one person can give him. I think you two are good for him.”

“Danny’s the second house on the left, his parents probably aren’t home from their jobs yet.”

            He let the topic shift slide as he pulled up on the curb, putting it in park before sliding out as Scott followed suit. Considering Danny only knew him as ‘cousin Miguel’, or possibly ‘that guy twice accused of murder who I saw once with blood on his shirt who hangs out with a bunch of underage high schoolers’, he opted to let Scott do a lot of the talking, or at least convince Danny to even let them in the house.

“Danny! Mind if we talk to you about something? It’s important.”

“Yeah, sure, come on in. You’re Derek, right? You know, you didn’t need to hide the fact that you were Stiles’s lover when he brought me over, I’m not going to judge you for robbing the cradle. Maybe try to take you from him, but can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“We weren’t together until yesterday.”

“Huh, could’ve fooled me with the way he looked at you back then. Well, whatever, what did you guys need?”

“Derek and I are werewolves and we want you to join our pack, as either a human or a werewolf,” Scott answered, face open and hopeful.

            He gave new meanings to the phrase ‘puppy dog eyes’.

“You’re serious, aren’t you? This is what all the weird stuff you guys get up to is about, like the stuff last year with Jackson, and Lydia being attacked, and the Argents.”

“You-You believe us? Without having to see us wolf-out?”

“It’s as good an explanation as any. Animal attacks, really? But if you’re set on it you can show me what you look like as a werewolf.”

            Apparently Scott really was intent on wolfing out in front of potential recruits because he did, much to Danny’s amusement.

“That’s pretty cool. But, I’ll take a pass on being a wolf, I prefer my humanity. So, who’s in the pack, and why do you want me?”

“So far it’s Derek, Isaac Lahey, Vernon Boyd, Derek’s creepy uncle Peter, Derek’s long lost sister Cora, Stiles, who is still human, and me. We’re hoping to add a few more people, and some of our parents are in on it, but that’s the roster for now. And we want you because you’re a pretty cool guy who has helped us out in the past, and we need your programming skills again.”

“You need help with all these murders, right? I’m in, I knew some of those people.”

“That easy?” Derek questioned, slightly wary of how simple it was.

“Like I said, I knew some of the people that died, and if Stilinski has managed to survive this long with you guys as a human, either it’s not really that dangerous or you guys are good about protecting your packmates. But if you’re that worried about me jumping aboard so quickly you can always take your shirt off again and convince me,” he added with a wink.

“Well, uh, mission accomplished I guess. We need you to encrypt the access to the CCTV at the Police Department, so no one can wipe footage of Stiles being there and try to incriminate him as a suspect in these murders,” Scott explained.

“Sure, doesn’t sound too hard. Why would Stiles be a suspect?”

“He does happen to find himself at a lot of fresh murder scenes.”

“Guess that would get suspicious, and the FBI aren’t likely to just explain it away as him having a police radio that he shouldn’t have like everyone else does. Are we going to meet him down there, or?”

“Yeah, we’re going to meet him there. The Sheriff knows about us, but none of the others do, so don’t say anything strange. My mom knows too, so does Lydia. Allison and her dad hunt werewolves, but not really anymore, just the bad ones now.”

“So your on-again-off-again girlfriend hunts your kind?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Please tell me you’ve never made a Romeo and Juliet comparison.”

            Scott’s face became stony, all the answer he needed to give for Danny to start laughing to himself as they walked toward the Camaro. It was a thankfully short trip to the station and Stiles’s heartbeat was normal when they got there, so the meeting was either still going well or went decently enough that he didn’t fly into a panic. Derek didn’t expect to be immediately questioned by one of the agents upon finding them, but he supposed he really should have.

“Where were you at roughly ten pm Wednesday?”

It took him a second to remember before responding, “I was here, talking to the Sheriff about taking a position as deputy. I assume video records will place me here during that time if you won’t take the word of the officers here who saw me. Why did you only ask me about that murder?”

“Mr. Harris was the only murder victim that could have possibly been involved in the Hale fire, and as you know everyone who was later found to be involved was murdered last year, mysteriously, right after you showed up.”

“Weren’t those murders determined to be Kate Argent covering her tracks before killing herself? And, Dr. Mathiss was here seven years ago, why aren’t you asking me about her murder?”

“Dr. Mathiss was in labor when the Hale fire happened, she couldn’t have been involved. As far as the other murders, it’s not hard to pin crimes on the dead.”

The man’s female partner came in to smooth things over, “What my partner is trying and failing to say is that we need to consider all possible suspects before we rule anyone out. Right now even children are suspects, so don’t take it personally, Mr. Hale. I’m sure video records will corroborate your story, and we’ll be out of your hair. Unless you’re with the younger Mr. Stilinski here, in which case, we have questions for you.”

“I am, we all are,” he added with a sweeping gesture at the other two.

“Is there a particular reason Mr. Stilinski has you all convinced this serial killer’s motivation is some sort of pagan ritual?”

“Because it makes perfect sense. How else were any of these people connected? I’m sure your list of suspects doesn’t go further than the high school, but even with that tying the first six together, you can’t explain the seventh. It’s not that unusual for sociopaths to become obsessed with a society that ritualizes human sacrifice.”

“Sociopath? I would think you’d be operating under the assumption that the murderer has some sort of major mental disorder, like paranoid schizophrenia, to think your ideas about their motive hold any water.”

Danny chimed in with a disarming smile, “We may be high schoolers, with the exception of Derek and Mrs. McCall, but even we know that psychotic people are generally harmless, and those that do kill people are prone mass murder, not serial killing.”

“I’ll admit, you seem to have something. Even narrowing it down to the kids we’ve been having some issues connecting them, and the three fatal wounds was a fairly clear indication that this killer was operating with a specific purpose.”

“So what are you going to do to protect the next victims?” Stiles asked, failing to hide his smile.

“Can’t tell you, seeing as you’re all still technically suspects. We’ll take precautions, though,” the second agent answered with an accommodating smile.

            As an ‘extra precaution’ they all end up hanging out in the archives, in full view of the completely untouchable CCTV camera. Short of taking a bullet to the thing, it would prove they were all here the entire time. Isaac came by after a bit, along with Boyd and Cora, and it was officially too crowded for anyone to do anything useful, so they sat and talked amongst each other about the new pack dynamics, using semaphore and code words. Generally speaking the Betas were pleased, most of all Cora, excited that he was actually getting somewhere with his life, building a stable pack and smiling on occasion. Of course, if those occasions all happened to be in response to Stiles, no one would bring it up. All proper Alphas had or were courting mates by the time they had an established pack, this was all part of the process.

            Eventually Lydia and Allison were called and appeared, barely pretending to look put out before sitting on a suddenly vacated chair or lap respectively. Stiles decided that Derek was a more than acceptable resting surface, long limbs draping over him haphazardly, and Allison was relaxing across Isaac and Scott’s legs as they rubbed her feet and shoulders. He could definitely see what Scott meant about who ‘wore the pants’ in the relationship, and so long as she didn’t fall into another bout of psychosis, he was completely fine with that. Isaac looked thrilled out of his mind that someone would let him touch them and even smile about it and thank him.

“Lydia, Allison, we, that is, Scott, and Derek, and me, we’re a trio, you know, like-Well you get it, but we were wondering if you-“

“Yes, I’ll join your,” she started answering before he could finish asking, glancing meaningfully at the camera, “Group. So long as Peter maintains at least a twenty foot distance from me, doesn’t speak to me unless it’s an emergency, and if he goes crazy again…Well.”

            There wasn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind what she meant, and no one disagreed.

“And you, Allison?” The oldest of them quested, doing his best at keeping his voice level.

“I don’t know…” Allison trailed off, looking caught in the headlights.

“Allison, are you really going to let your family take something else away from you? Don’t you want this? I know you can feel it too. It’s…right,” Lydia pressed, as gentle as she ever got.

“You know, you’re right. My family already took my mother away with their psychosis, they don’t get to take the…group from me too. I’m in, and I’ll talk to my dad.”

“This seems too easy, something terrible must be about to happen,” Stiles muttered, half the room shouting at him not to jinx it.

“Wait, Stiles, you said once that you believing the group would protect you made them, does that mean that you believing everyone would join the group would also make them do it?"

            Derek was back to vaguely wanting to maim Scott, smelling and hearing the sudden emotional and cardiac distress Stiles went into at the words. Plus, anyone watching this video feed would find his words rather strange.

“One: Scott, you are a moron. Two: I am immune to all things stupid wiccan magic because I don’t believe in it, therefore nothing Stiles did or didn’t believe would have an effect on me wanting to join your super-secret club,” the redhead said primly, studying her nails imperiously.

“And this is why Lydia is better than all of you, Derek excepted,” Stiles announced, relieved.

“Excuse me?” She hissed, affronted.

“Sorry, Lyds, he’s my boyfriend _who would never take advantage of me_ , I kinda have to think he’s the best. You’re still the better half of Team Genius.”

“I think I’m flattered?” He informed the room questioningly, because it would make Stiles smile.

            To his surprise, some of the others laughed. This, of course, was when the lights went out and people started screaming. They filtered out carefully but quickly, wary of hurting the humans in the pack by all trying to cram through the doorway at the same time. The lack of light didn’t even register for a few tense seconds while he got his bearings around the fury that anyone would attack somewhere near his lover, the werewolves immediately searching the nearby rooms for people hiding or the perpetrator of the crimes. There was a trail of blood out of the entrance, and the Sheriff’s heartbeat was in the breaker room, seconds before the lights came back on and it was moving again.

“Stiles? Stiles where-Thank god, is the pack alright?” He asked quickly as he pulled his son into a bear hug.

Stiles squawked at the pressure on his ribs and flailed until the Sheriff let him go and they all did a quick headcount. The pack was there, but the secretary wasn’t. No one else was hurt, just rattled and in various states of shock as they gazed at the streaks on the floor. The FBI agents rushed in a few minutes later, breathing hard and realizing they were too late immediately.

“She killed two on-duty nurses right in the hospital. The secretary’s missing, right? She was a practicing Wiccan, she told me about it on her lunch break,” the female agent, Ms. Hamel, panted, devastated.

“She?”

“She managed to cut the lights and the cameras, but I got a good enough look to determine her gender even in the dark. Not hard to tell that much by silhouette. Congratulations, it seems none of you are suspects any more. The others are out looking for her now, but I doubt we’ll find her before she kills the secretary.”

            Her phone beeped and she looked at it, swearing before showing her partner, both their faces grim. Apparently someone found what was left of the bright woman who never failed to smile at him when he came in, choked against a tree like all the others.

            Stiles stuttered several partial sentences before his father finally understood that he needed to go and handle this with the pack, shooing him so they both could get to work. They exited the building as a group, all piling into the various vehicles that were there, thankful that Lydia’s car had been fixed even as they jammed Scott in the trunk of Allison’s car for being a fucking idiot earlier, at the strawberry blonde’s request. He complained, but allowed it. Whipped did not begin to describe him.

“She’s two magic-users away from needing that capstone, now might be a good time to tell us who it is, Stiles,” he suggested, ignoring the looks he got from Cora and Boyd.

“I still don’t know for sure yet, there’s still a piece missing and I’m waiting to see if they show that side of themselves, because otherwise we end up wasting our valuable resources protecting the wrong person. Trust me, Derek, please.”

            He nodded, carefully unclenching his jaw. Stiles wouldn’t lie to him, even if he couldn’t tell by the teen’s heartbeat that he was being truthful.

“What is she saving up all this power for?”

“Resurrection spell, I think, it’s the only thing that requires this much power. Derek, we should talk to Deaton, he’s got a foot in on situations like this. Pack meeting first, of course, we have to all agree on it.”

            Peter stayed a respectful distance from Lydia, not having much to add to this conversation anyway. The first order of business was addressing Stiles’s protection spell, which he put on everyone one by one, warning them that he still didn’t know for sure how powerful it would be, especially for the people he didn’t know well. Scott relayed his earlier suggestion to the Spark, whose eyes lit up.

“Scott, I could kiss you if I wasn’t already in a committed relationship with a guy who is way hotter than you, no offense.”

“None taken.”

            Apparently sensing that he would need some help, everyone automatically crowded in on Stiles, including Peter, for once not feeling like intimidating anyone. By the time he was done his eyes and chest were glowing, something soft in his expression a moment before everyone just sort of collapsed in on him in a giant pile through some unspoken command.

“Is this…is a puppy pile happening? Is this real life or did I kill myself with that spell?”

“It’s real life, and it’s disgustingly cute,” Peter replied from somewhere in the mass of bodies, seconds before grunting when Boyd ‘accidentally’ kneed him in the face.

“It must be real, otherwise you’d be dead and I’d be naked.”

“Woah, Stiles, I don’t want to think about you naked, man.”

“Dude, you have seen me naked hundreds of times, we’re on a sports team together."

“And speak for yourself, Scott, I wouldn’t mind seeing Stiles naked,” Cora responded, resting her head on Derek’s thigh where he was wrapped around his boyfriend.

“Mine.”

“Wow, great use of your words there, loverwolf. Really breaking out all the stops to impress your sister, aren’t you?”

“Did you seriously give him the pet name-”

“You don’t get to say that, Isaac, hush,” Allison cut him off with a hand over his mouth.

            There was movement outside and all the non-humans tensed and started untangling themselves, whispering about foreign heartbeats and the scent of other werewolves. Stiles got a look in his eyes that Derek loathed, the one where he was considering something wildly heroic that would make the Alpha wonder why the hell the brown-eyed teen didn’t realize he was running the show half the time. Erica was right, Erica had always been right about him even if this wasn’t a comic book and the lines weren’t as simply drawn, he was Batman and Scott was his Robin, always needing to be saved.

“I left some mountain ash in a bag under your bed in case we were ever attacked in the apartment, everyone form a loose circle around the humans so I can make a ring to protect them,” he directed the first part to his partner, the second to everyone as a whole.

“You heard him, protect the humans and let Stiles, Scott, and myself do the talking.”

            He didn’t realize something was wrong until he located Stiles’s heartbeat behind him, toward the only entrance into the loft. The question of what he was doing died in his mouth when the Spark blew mountain ash toward them, settling into a shimmering ring large enough to accommodate everyone but himself.

“Stiles. Break this right now, get inside it, or at least let me out, I can fight them. You’re human, what the hell are you planning on doing against five Alphas?” Derek grit out against his terror and rage, vision going red.

“I don’t know, Derek, what the hell are _you_ planning on doing against them? You watched me cast that spell, the Pack is protecting me, and I’m protecting the Pack. The Alphas can’t hurt me, not with all of you here. Lydia, Danny, Allison, don’t you dare break that line. The spell could backfire and hurt me if you do,” he warned, heart steady.

“He’s telling the truth, don’t do it unless it’s an emergency. Stiles, please don’t do this to me. Don’t make me watch while they tear you apart.”

“Are we interrupting something? Lover’s spat, perhaps?” Deucalion snarked as the five of them filtered in, the twins balking a bit when they looked at the pack.

            Glancing back, he saw Lydia and Danny wearing matching looks of shock and anger, guessing they either were friends with or dating Ethan and Aiden.

“I’m Stiles Stilinski, one of the three Alphas in the Beacon Hills Pack, and I speak for everyone when I say that you can all haul your overgrown asses out of here and never come back. We’re stronger than you, and we don’t ask twice.”

            Everyone could hear the pounding of Stiles’s heart, but his eyes were wild and his smirk wide. He was terrified, but he would do anything to protect the people he cared about. Apparently up to and including pitting his fragile human body against the likes of five powerful Alphas.

“Alpha? What does it say about a pack of wolves who needs three leaders to operate, one of them a teenage human? I must say, Derek, I expected better of a Hale. What would Talia think of how you’re using her Alpha powers?”

            A fireball caught him across the face, knocking his glasses off. The burns healed almost immediately, but it seemed to be enough to cause him offense. Blind eyes glared at the pale human, assessing even though they couldn’t see.

“Don’t disrespect his family or you’ll find out if I have wolfsbane in my pockets or not.”

“Ennis, break a few of his ribs, won’t you?” Deucalion ordered, tone bored.

            Derek never felt more tense in his life than when the werewolf’s arm came swinging toward a maddeningly unmoving Stiles. He loosened up a little when the blow simply bounced off, Stiles smiling innocently like he had no idea that was going to happen.

“I wouldn’t expect you werewolf rejects to understand this, but my Pack makes me strong. Stronger than you.”

“So you’re not just the Alpha’s mate, you’re the Alpha’s little soldier here to fight all his battles for him, are you?”

“Maybe you’re too slow to have gotten it the first time, he _is_ an Alpha,” Derek growled.

“I was going to extend an invitation to join us, Derek, but I can see now your mate is the power behind your pack. I have no need of weak Alphas. The true power of an Alpha comes when you start killing your pack and taking their strength. Perhaps if you turned your Spark here and killed him, you’d be able to stand up to us.”

“Let me turn him, Duke, I’ve always wondered what magic was like,” Kali hissed, eyes avaricious, “Or maybe we could just make him ours.”

“Well, Derek, are you going to let us kill your mate, watch us take him? Oh, that’s right, you’re so pathetic you let him trap you. I suppose you don’t get a vote. Tell me, Stiles, can your spells protect you from five Alphas at once?”

            The belief on his face never wavered and he remained silent, all the answer the lead Alpha apparently needed to sic them on him.

“Aiden, Ethan, stand down!” Lydia commanded, hands on her hips beside Danny.

            To almost everyone’s surprise they halted, staring at their apparent significant others with conflicted expressions. Stiles puffed a tiny amount of mountain ash toward them and the green-eyed werewolf was suitably impressed when the pinch expanded outward to form a circle around them. They settled, seeming to accept their confines fairly easily, keeping their eyes trained on the two humans that seemed to hold sway over them.

“Wait, weren’t you just making fun of our pack for having a human Alpha? Seems like your Alphas are more willing to follow the lead of their completely human, non-Alpha mates than you. That must be very hurtful.”

            The following onslaught by the remaining three members of the pack was difficult to track, the enemies moving in a flurry of attacks on Stiles’s protection spell. It shuddered and at one point he was knocked down by a combined blow from Kali and Deucalion, but none of them were able to make contact with his delicate form. As much as he despised not being consulted about this, he knew that if it had been him outside the circle, he’d be precisely as dead as they wanted him by now. That didn’t mean he wasn’t fully intending to strangle his boyfriend as soon as he could reach him. Stiles picked himself up from the floor when they stopped, looking triumphant.

“Well, I have an old friend to talk to about a certain agreement we had. Until the next time we meet, Stiles Stilinski. Make no mistake, we will find you alone, and you won’t survive the experience. It’s been a pleasure, all of you. Oh, and Aiden, Ethan? If I ever see you again you’ll find out why they call me the Demon Wolf.”

            They whimpered, low enough that only the wolves could hear, but then the other Alphas were gone and the loft was silent again save for the sound of everyone breathing. Still breathing.

“Stiles.”

“Okay, so, Lydia, I’m going to drive to Canada and I’ll give you a call when it’s okay to break that line.”

“Stiles, if you don’t break this line, you’re out of the pack,” Derek snarled, knowing it was the only threat likely to work.

            He swallowed hard, eyes flashing in fear, before walking up and toeing the line open. It was hard to be angry when he looked so vulnerable, but in light of what he’d just risked, it actually really wasn’t.

“I’ll deal with you later,” he hissed, turning on the twin Alphas, “I motion that the full Pack should vote on whether or not we take in Ethan and Aiden.”

“I second the motion, Stiles?” Scott offered, looking more thunderstruck than angry.

“Third. Every gets one vote, anyone who abstains or votes against it has to supply a reason why, not because you’re wrong, but because we need your opinions. Ethan, Aiden, you want to join us, right? Because if not we’ll just have Lydia kill you, I think she’s in the mood.”

“Oh, definitely, I have some issues about being lied to,” she said, teeth flashing in what was most certainly not a smile.

“We don’t have anywhere else to go,” Ethan started, glancing at his brother.

“Our mates are in your pack,” Aiden finished, looking imploringly at Lydia, possibly trying to convince her not to rip his balls off telepathically.

“I only vote yes so long as they take no leadership roles, and revert back to Betas if that’s still possible for them,” Stiles lead, looking for anyone else to speak.

“I stand with Stiles on this,” Lydia agreed, green eyes thoughtful.

            One by one everyone agreed, a few adding in their various reasoning, until all that were left was Derek and Danny. Looking at the younger male, he gave the nonverbal go-ahead.

“So long as they don’t lie to me or Lydia again, about anything, and commit to killing their comrades if it comes to that.”

“I have one question, can you two follow all the ground rules set by the other Pack?” Derek asked, feeling the tension in the room building second by second.

“Yeah, we can. Better than the alternative, we’d kind of like to graduate at some point. And maybe still have dates to Prom?”

“Don’t push it,” Lydia huffs, though she looks like she might eventually find forgiveness in her somewhere.

“I agree, then. Barring any sudden argument, welcome to the Beacon Hills Pack.”

“So…can someone break the line and let us out, maybe, or?”

Danny hummed, “No, actually, you’re going to stay there until you properly apologize for lying and tell the whole pack about what you know of the Alpha Pack’s weaknesses and plans.”

            They all sit around and listen carefully to the various strengths and presumed weaknesses of their rivals, finding out that the twins were the most recent addition to the Pack. They didn’t want to talk about how they became Alphas, eyes going distant in a stare that Derek knew all too well, so he told the others not to push it. Triggering someone with trauma wasn’t an acceptable way to sate curiosity. The entire time he carefully didn’t touch Stiles, even though he could feel the teen’s panic and despair radiating outward, because he just couldn’t. He couldn’t touch those thin wrists and long fingers, feel the workings of organs that wouldn’t heal automatically under his skin, without thinking about how easily it could have all been shattered. Stiles was verging on a panic attack but he wasn’t capable of forgiving him for doing what he had yet. The teen could just as easily been standing inside the circle with them, even if it wouldn’t have proven their Pack’s superior strength.

            They released the twins, who didn’t immediately try to kill anyone, simply curled around their partners and whined until they were forgiven. Sometimes it was easy to forget how young all of them were, even he wasn’t old enough to be shouldering the burden of being an Alpha to this many teenagers. Just because he was sharing the weight didn’t mean he was any more ready to handle it.

“Stiles and I are going to talk to Deaton. Everyone else, if anything happens call us immediately and check in every ten minutes,” he announced, grabbing his jacket before heading down to the Camaro.

            Stiles followed him, silent but for his arrhythmic heartbeat. When it continued to stutter in threes and staccato ones between the twos, faster and faster, he pinned the teen to the car door and forced him to breathe slowly. It settled back into its proper rhythm, though the brunet was still stressed out. At least he wasn’t about to go into cardiac arrest.

“I should have discussed it with you and Scott. I’m sorry, Derek. I just…having everyone there when they attacked, I got scared about losing everyone, and I panicked and made a stupid decision.”

            It was incredibly rude of him to defuse most of the werewolf’s anger in just a few sentences. He was still upset, there was a lot of hurt to burn through, but it was difficult to be mad when Derek could recognize that in the same situation he might do the exact same thing.

“You should have discussed it with us, and I’m furious that you didn’t, that you put your life on the line without even asking if we had ideas. I get that you had complete faith in our ability to protect you and that’s the only reason you did it, but that doesn’t excuse it. Just…let me be mad for a little while, Stiles. I forgive you, I just need time to be angry with you.”

“Of course, take all the time you need,” he sighed, relieved.

“There is one condition. Since it’s obvious I can’t trust you as much as I thought I could, as soon as we’re done talking with Deaton, we need to discuss the issue of the last sacrifice. I no longer think the reason you’re keeping it from me is benevolent.”

“That’s…fair,” he admits, biting his lip and looking a little worried.

            It couldn’t have been that bad of a secret if he didn’t go into a full panic over it, at least. They arrived and entered the clinic, Deaton waving them in after making sure they were alone. As blank as he tried to make his expression, the corners of his mouth were turned in a grave expression. He must have known they’d be coming.

“Which of your assorted crises have brought you here?”

“All of them, actually. My eyes change color, the Alpha Pack are coming for me next, and the evil druid that’s sacrificing everyone is almost to the end of her killing spree.”

“Let’s go down the list then, show me how they change,” he replied, taking everything in stride with little more than a blink.

            There was a short pause, then anger sparked in the air around them and his eyes glowed gold for a few seconds before fading. The desire to ask what Stiles had been thinking about was overwhelming, but he tamped it down like so many other emotions when it came to the other. Deaton looked impressed, of all things, crossing his arms and leaning back a little.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, there’s magic on both sides of your family, and your mother’s dying wish was that you got the power you needed.”

“To do what?” The teen asked, eyes glistening at the thought of his mom.

“Anything. She gave you the magical talent to achieve just about anything you wanted, I assume she expected you to use it responsibly,” he gave Stiles a look before continuing, “In terms of raw aptitude, if you knew how you could use most spells I can do, perhaps to greater effect with a great deal of training. If you choose to see how far you can take yourself, I doubt very much you’ll be disappointed.”

“So Stiles could be incredibly powerful, stronger than even you, and you’re just now thinking that you should maybe mention it to him?”

“He didn’t ask before,” the enigmatic vet sniped, expression mocking in its blankness.

“What if the Alphas do turn me, I won’t lose my ability to do magic, will I?”

“Sparks…Or mages, as is the more accurate term at this point, are very hard to turn because the magic in your blood will fight against the magic infection of the bite, but if you were successfully turned, you would retain your magical abilities, and gain those of a werewolf as well. It is…not as ideal a situation as it sounds, hunters have specific watchers for magic-using werewolves, to become one would put you under intense scrutiny, and not all hunters have a code like the Argents at least pretended to."

“No, it’s cool, I like my humanity. I just…with the Alphas after me, I don’t know if I’ll have a choice.”

            He growled unconsciously at the idea of someone else taking Stiles’s humanity away from him like he was nothing more than a toy, Deaton giving him a knowing look. As the youngest of them launched into an explanation of the Alpha Pack’s run in with them and plans for the best way to combat angry Alphas, he tried to pay attention but largely failed. There was no easy way to deal with them, in fact the only way to deal with the ones they hadn’t claimed as their own was to kill them before they retaliated.

“Okay, I’m sure you know this by now, but there’s this druid lady that’s killing everyone in town for a ritual, and I need to know how to stop her.”

“She is no longer a druid, since she began murdering she ceased to deserve that name. Now she is Darach, or Dark Oak. The twisted shell of a once powerful potential magic-user, and someone I had hoped would remain in the past. By tonight she’ll have her other two sacrifices, I don’t think you have much chance of stopping her now,” he said resignedly, heart skipping a beat over the last part.

“She needs three sacrifices, Deaton, and we both know it so don’t insult my totally legitimate knowledge of ancient rituals. There’s still time to stop her before she casts the spell.”

The vet watched him gravely for several moments before finally speaking, “I suppose you’re right. The only way to stop her is to kill her, but if she has already started the spell there’s a chance it will backfire and kill everyone in a mile radius.”

“Then I’ll make sure everyone but Derek is at least a mile away. He’s an Alpha, and he’s under my protection. Even if I die, it’ll stick.”

            He’d never seen Deaton alarmed, had assumed that human emotions were somehow beneath whatever he was, but there was no way that wasn’t a brief expression of surprise. And not the good kind.

“Did you know what you were doing when you cast that spell, Stiles?”

“I was fully aware. I’m going to be a boy who runs with wolves for the rest of my human life, however long or short, might as well make it worth it when the hunters come for me.”

“What did you do, Stiles?”

“I tied myself to you, Derek. To the Pack. I will always belong to the Pack, and if I die, the protection spells stay. That’s why the spell took so much practice, a normal protection spell is child’s play. All of you accepted it, whether you realized it or not, and so when I cast the spell on myself, it took all those emotions, all that power, and turned it back in on me. I put all my faith, literally some of my life force, into you guys, and in turn you all gave it back. If any of the pack die, their protection spell feedback loop will still work on me. In retrospect I probably should have asked you if you minded being tied to me like that for the rest of forever, but I guess I just assumed that’s what pack meant,” he explained sheepishly, apparently mistaking Derek’s enraptured expression for one of shock.

“You assumed right, Stiles, but…You really want to be with the Pack forever?”

“I told you this before, and I know you heard me, so now we’re having issues with you not believing me. I’m a person, Derek, not a unicorn. Even if I’m your unicorn, I am not an actual unicorn, so you should believe me when I say things especially when you can fucking hear that I’m not lying.

“I should have known you watch Supernatural,” he muttered, realizing his mistake when Stiles’s face lit up.

“Way to admit you watch it too.”

“I hate to interrupt-”

“You obviously don’t,” Stiles interjected, the reflex apparently automatic.

“But did you just explain that you turned the highest level protection spell a mage can manage by themselves into an irreversible feedback loop?”

“Yeah. Once Scott suggested I put all the love the pack had for me into a protection spell on myself, it was really easy to use the idea of my protection for them becoming their protection for me to shape the magic.”

“Easy,” he said, repeating the word as if it was suddenly foreign to him.

“It required a little more concentration than mountain ash, but yeah. And it was strong enough to stand up to three Alphas at once without me even needing to do anything except believe in my Pack, which comes naturally.”

“The Darach is casting this spell to bring back deceased magic users, which is why it requires so much power. I would estimate she intends to bring back exactly as many people as she killed, for a single resurrection she’d only need three nonspecific sacrifices. A more powerful practitioner could probably bring back two to three times more people than she can, though even being able to do a straight trade is better than most magic-users can do now. In the past, when mages much stronger than you were practicing, the ritual she’s performing to could raise an entire army.”

“And that just slipped under the radar? Wait, does that mean dragons are real?” He pressed, excited and failing to let anyone else in on his train of thought.

            Deaton remained impassive, letting him stew in his curiosity.

“So the Darach, is she a relative, or just an old friend?” Derek asked, intentionally being accusatory.

“I knew her family, when she was young, and I helped nurture some of her magical abilities when she was still sane. Now she’s something else.”

“And you’re sending a child to do what you couldn’t when you saw her start to become twisted.”

“Derek, stop.”

“No, he’s quite right. We all make mistakes, let emotions cloud our judgment.”

            He felt his muscles locking up, defenses automatic, but he didn’t think Deaton was really trying to blame him for the fire, just point out that they were not so unalike. Both of them had gotten Stiles and his group in massive amounts of trouble one way or another, through no real fault of their own. Maybe there was something else they could have done, but the murder was fully on the shoulders of the person who did it.

“We’d better get back to the Pack, even though they’ve checked in three times now, they probably miss us,” Stiles said finally, breaking the tension.

            He nodded, bidding the vet a terse goodbye and walking out with his boyfriend. Deciding to give Stiles a little time before forcing him to finally tell Derek who the missing piece of the sacrifice puzzle was, he followed the other inside, then left to smoke a few cigarettes that were in his glove box for emergencies only. He’d picked up the habit shortly after the fire just to be able to pretend there was a reason he smelled smoke all the time, and had mostly dropped it, but once in a while he needed to again. His lungs couldn’t be damaged, so it was more an issue of having a crutch than anything else.

            Two shots rang out just as he felt a single biting pain in his leg. Collapsing, he held a hand to the wound in his thigh thick with wolfsbane, shattered bits of the other bullet around where his protective shield would have been. Looking up at a female figure, he wondered how he could have let anyone get that close to him, then realized as she moved that she had no heartbeat, made no sound; she was cloaked with a spell that made her basically invisible to all his senses but sight. It was Jennifer, the English teacher he’d checked on once after she’d almost gotten shredded by Boyd and Cora. Now he regretted not letting them have her. He could hear Stiles screaming in the distance, sounding agonized. Vision swimming, he wondered just what kind of monkshood this was that it was already this bad, lifting his shirt to see black spidering up his abdomen.

“Before you ask, no, they can’t hear you, and no, you won’t die right away. You’ve got at least another six hours,” she said, jamming a needle full of sedative into his neck and pressing the plunger down, “Can’t let a literary soul like yours die without a little suffering now, can we?”

            He blacked out wondering if maybe a smoking habit really could kill werewolves.

 

* * *

 

 

            Coming back to the sound of his phone ringing, he grunted and briefly strained against the wolfsbane-coated shackles before giving up, body weak. The Darach, _Jennifer_ , he reminded himself, clucked her tongue before answering the phone.

“Derek’s a little tied up right now, can he call you back?”

“Really, did you really fucking just use that line? So what did Deucalion tell you?”

“Oh, you are a smart one. He said to take Derek Hale, that my final sacrifice would show themselves.”

“Fucker was right, it’s me. I’m Stiles Stilinski, a druid, a healer, a soldier, and unfortunately, a virgin. I’m an Alpha, I’m an Alpha’s mate, and I swear I will burn this whole fucking planet to the ground if you kill him. I’ll trade him for me. You get what you want, I get what I want.”

“Stiles, don’t you dare!” He found the strength to shout, body rebelling against the wolfsbane.

“It’s a deal. Bring Deaton, he and I have some unfinished business. I’m in the small warehouse on 23rd.”

“You got it, bitch. Also, fuck you.”

“See you soon, Stiles Stilinski.”

Apparently much sooner than she expected, as the two magic-users entered only about three minutes later. Recovering her bemused expression quickly, she looked over his boyfriend and nodded, seeing what she wanted. He wanted to kill her, to rip her to shreds for looking at Stiles like he was a piece of meat.

“Such a shame to lose an overachiever like you, I did enjoy your essays. Deaton, the things you need to free and heal the wolf are in the corner there. Don’t even try to break the line or kill me, the spell is already started and will kill all of us if you stop it.”

            Deaton got him free and burned the wolfsbane, power flooding his body as the poison disappeared. There was a circle of ash separating him from his mate, and the woman who intended to kill him was chanting and holding a knife a few inches from his heart. The vet shook his head vaguely, eyes imploring him not to do anything stupid. His body ached with inaction, mind telling him to slam himself against the wall even if it would be useless, anything to distract her from killing Stiles.

“I’m stronger than you, you know. A lot stronger. So much stronger that my whole fucking pack is here under your radar and there’s nothing you can do to stop them from killing you, I’ve given them shit that will pierce your protection spell like it’s made of sugar. But don’t worry, I’ll complete your spell for you, because you were your own sacrifice originally, weren’t you? You’ve been saving yourself and training for this, but then you met the Alphas and they told you there might be another candidate and you let yourself take the selfish way out,” he finished with a smile as the Pack ran in through every exit in the warehouse.

            She hurriedly finished chanting, raising the knife just as Chris shot repeatedly at the protection spell around her and Allison loosed an arrow, shattering the barrier and allowing the arrow to plough straight into her forehead. Stiles shouted at them to get back as her body hit the ground, the air glowing with tendrils of magic. Lydia ran forward and broke the line and Derek could have kissed her for her willful refusal to heed an Alpha but he was too busy running to Stiles’s side.

“Derek, give me your hand. Okay, whatever you do, don’t freak out. I know your birthday is next month, but I’ve got a present for you.”

            He held on to the teen’s hand as tightly as he could without hurting him and closed his eyes when the light got too bright. His body pulsed with the magic, but he could feel the Pack just as strong as ever, and none of them were being hurt by it, so he forced himself to remain calm and let Stiles do whatever it was he was doing. The intensity got to the point where he could feel his skin burning slightly, but he didn’t smell burning flesh and assumed it was just a sensation. The feeling faded and he heard other heartbeats in the room, some impossibly familiar, but the only one he cared about was tripping and he gripped his boyfriend tight as he started to fade.

“Stiles? Stiles, say something,” he begged, shaking him back awake when his eyes rolled back.

“D-did it work?”

            He finally looked over at the new heartbeats, freezing when he saw his family standing there, along with the sacrifices, Victoria Argent, Erica, and a woman who looked so much like Stiles she had to be his mother. The Pack had apparently brought enough blankets to cover all of them, he supposed resurrections didn’t come with a clothes option. They were having things explained to them by the Sheriff, though from what he could hear they remembered almost everything, except the years or days they weren’t alive. Focusing back on his mate, he gave Stiles a watery smile.

“Yeah, it worked, Stiles. You’re not dying, are you?”

“No, loverwolf, I am not dying. I just…I’m really tired. I wanna see my mom before I pass out though, can you…”

“Mrs. Stilinski, your son needs you,” he called, feeling some mixture of elated and numb.

            She trotted over, kneeling next to him and sweeping his bangs back where a few were sticking to sweat on his forehead. He wondered if he looked at Stiles the same way, like he was the moon and stars, assuming he probably did. Stiles deserved more people to look at him like that.

“You gave me what I needed, Mom. Thank you,” he whispered, eyes dulling as he fought to keep them open.

“You’ve already done so much more good with it than I ever expected you to. I’m so proud of you, Stiles. Rest, we’ll still be here when you wake up, I promise.”

            That was all it took for him to pass out in Derek’s arms, the werewolf gathering him close instinctually, even though he knew he was in the presence of nothing but friendlies. Stiles’s mother, Helena, she informed him, smiled at him knowingly.

“I’m not taking advantage of him,” he said, running on autopilot.

“If you were, my husband would shoot you.”

“We’re headed back to my house, son, I can take Stiles if you need me to. You were just shot-”

He almost growled when the Sheriff reached out towards the sleeping figure in his arms but managed to stop himself and instead said, “I’ve already healed. I don’t…want to let him go right now.

“That’s fine, sure,” the man just nodded, weary.

            Peter finally stopped hugging his wife and kids as they all filtered out into the night air to the waiting vehicles, everyone in the know about the situation staying almost uncomfortably close to each other. Until they managed to recover from their shock, they were running on pack instinct.

“So how are we going to explain all this?” He asked aloud.

Ethan and Aiden wiggled their claws meaningfully before Ethan answered, “We made a few adjustments to the town.”

Allison continued, “You were out for four hours, that was enough. Danny took care of any official records, and Deaton called in a favor with a witch who deals with this sort of thing, so on a global scale no one will have record of the deaths. Those who might remember outside of town will assume they had a fever dream, or will be summarily ignored. It’s not perfect, but it’s clean enough.”

“And the sacrifices?”

“Won’t remember after Ethan and Aiden help them home, don’t worry. Stiles worked all this out before he called your phone,” Scott piped up.

“You all did well, thank you.”

            They separated about halfway to the Sheriff’s house, a few headed to take the revived victims home while they rest continued on toward their destination. The others would return as soon as everything was back to rights. Setting Stiles down on the bed, he watched the teen sleep for a few minutes before signaling for the pack to pile in with him, immediately turning the mussed sheets into a mass of relaxed bodies. Gathering his courage, he headed down the stairs to his family, who were relaying the size they wore to Allison and Lydia, apparently in charge of their clothes shopping. He could think of no one more qualified for the job, and it gave him a warm feeling to have such competent and eager packmates. He reminded them that Erica needed new clothes as well, and they rolled their eyes at him like he was an idiot to think they’d forget her.

“Derek, I was hoping you could take me on a drive,” his mother asked, already dressed in the Sheriff’s clothes.

“Sure, Mom,” he answered quietly, leading her back out to the Camaro and sliding in.

“Take me to the old house, I want to see what we’ll have to do to demolish it and start anew.”

“Are you sure? It’s…It’s bad,” he ended lamely, panic welling in his chest and choking any of the other words he wanted to use out of him.

“How much of the insurance money is left, if any? I know it’s been a few years.”

They were stopped at a red light, so he fiddled with his smartphone until he had his bank account displayed and handed it to her by way of explanation, “I tried not to…other than what we needed to live. I didn’t really feel I had a right to use it.”

“Derek, you’re telling me you lived for seven years on less than fifty thousand dollars?”

“Laura and I worked when we were in New York, and when I came back here I lived in the house for a while, then an abandoned train depot, and then finally I started renting a loft, because none of those places were good enough for the Pack.”

“None of those places are good enough for anyone, least of all you, little wolf.”

            The term of affection he hadn’t heard in so long stung, because he didn’t deserve his mother looking at him like she still loved him, like he wasn’t a monster she regretted having. He bit his lip just for the sensation and continued on through the preserve. By the time they arrived he was genuinely concerned this was a ruse and she would kill him for what he’d done, but he knew his mother was too good a person to lead him on like this instead of just doing what needed to be done.

            She got out and circled the building once, touching the scorched railing on the porch as she considered the home that she’d helped build and fill with a family. Hand coming away sooty, she sighed before turning back to him where he’d been standing a little ways away from his car, rooted to the spot. Her eyes flashed red, something that she only did when she meant business.

“Will you tell me what happened? Why you blame yourself for this?”

He blinked, then realized that the Sheriff had protected his secret. No wonder she wasn’t ready to kill him yet, she didn’t even know.

“Kate Argent seduced me a few months before the fire. I let her in on our secret, and I gave her a key to the house when she promised me everything so she could get past the wards. You know what she did from there. I was stupid and naïve and everyone died because of me.”

“Derek Hale, you listen to me and listen well,” she ordered, eyes glowing with anger, “If I could kill that horrible woman again, I would, and slowly. What she did to you were the actions of a monster. You were a child, a victim. _None_ of this is your fault.”

            He reeled, tears falling from his eyes before he could blink them away. It was one thing to see the words on a cake, something else entirely to hear it straight from his mother’s mouth. She pulled him into a hug and he buried his face in her shoulder, letting himself cry for the first time since the fire. Minutes passed and eventually he stopped, still holding onto Talia as if the world would fall out from under him if he let go. Finally he stepped away and wiped at his eyes, feeling lighter.

“I will always be proud of you for making something of yourself even after all that happened to you. Your pack is beautiful, and there are thousands of wolves who would do worse than kill for your mate.”

“I, uh, haven’t claimed him yet. We’re dating, and he calls himself my mate, which is right, but we haven’t-He’s seventeen and his father is the Sheriff.”

“The Sheriff thinks the world of you, he would turn the other way as long as he was certain Stiles wasn’t being hurt or pressured by you.”

“I’m not going to risk becoming like Kate,” he said, feeling better for admitting it out loud.

“You won’t, little wolf, you are so much more than she could ever be or take away from you. But I understand. Helena is thrilled, she’d always hoped Stiles and one of our family would fall in love. She’s been like a sister to me since we were young.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep Stiles. He’s…amazing,” he settled, not wanting to start listing attributes he enjoyed for fear he’d start sounding like the lovesick teenagers he surrounded himself with.

            There were things Stiles did that pissed him off, things about him that bothered him, but by far the pros outweighed the cons. Just because right now most people couldn’t see that didn’t mean that would stay true when he went off to college. He was already growing into himself, people were bound to start noticing by the time he hit senior year.

“Stiles joined your pack, claims himself as your mate, and risked his life to save you and then again to resurrect your entire family. I think he has plans to stay,” she retorted, having none of his shit.

“I missed you. I missed all of you.”

“We’re here now, Derek, and I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Neither did you. Say it for me, Derek. Tell me you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I-I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Good. The next step is to get that skip in your heartbeat out of that sentence. John offered trauma counseling to all of us, and I plan to have the children go through it. I know you’re a grown man now, but as your mother, can I still ask you to try it?”

“I’ll think about it, Mom, the Sheriff has already told me he wanted me to get counseling if I could stand to talk about it. I have to get rid of the Alpha Pack first, everything else comes second.”

“We’ll take care of them, Derek, your father and I, and your older brothers and sisters. Your pack is so young and you’ve already had to deal with losing one of them to the Alphas once.”

“It’s fine, Mom, we’re stronger now. We have the humans on our side, we have three Alphas instead of just me, five if you count the newest additions. They haven’t gone through the process of becoming betas, we’re not ready for them to yet.”

“There are only three Alpha werewolves in your pack now, what do you mean?”

“Stiles and Scott are the other two Alphas, leaders of the pack. None of us are good enough on our own to handle a pack as large and young as ours.”

“Are you going to turn Stiles?”

“Not unless he asks me to or he’s dying. He wants to remain human, and as strong as he is, he can stand up to three Alphas so long as the Pack is there with him. He doesn’t need to become a werewolf to be powerful.”

“Deaton said as much, but I assumed he was trying to exaggerate his protégé. I can’t wait to meet your human Alpha mage mate,” she stated, failing to hide a smile.

            They looked at the house for a few beats more before turning back toward the car and heading to the Stilinski household. Both packs were still there, Victoria Argent sitting with her husband looking like Derek was something more than an annoying bug to be squashed for once. Her eyes glowed and he understood; Stiles could bring her back, but not as a human.

“Mrs. Argent-”

“Don’t apologize, Hale, I don’t appreciate being patronized,” she snapped, before her mouth quirked up in a vicious smirk, “Besides, we’re Pack now, right?”

“Yeah, we’re Pack. Chris?”

“My wife and my daughter are both members of your pack, and so far you haven’t tried to kill me unprovoked. I can’t say the same about the rest of my family, so I guess I’ll become part of yours.”

Deaton approached him, “Your mother requested that I continue aiding you when you need it, so call me if you have any issues with Stiles. I believe I owe your Pack for taking care of a problem I’ve been ignoring for years.”

            He nodded and the vet left, the Sheriff gesturing to him that he should go upstairs and be with everyone else. Of course, each Hale took their turn hugging him, even Laura and Cora, smiling for the first time in ages. Climbing the stairs to Stiles’s bedroom again, he wondered what the hell he’d done so right in his life to deserve someone like the hyperactive teen, coming up blank.

            The pack moved to accommodate him, Stiles rolling over in his sleep to curl into Derek, nuzzling into the older man’s chest like he was a teddy bear. Erica stroked a hand through his hair, all the gesture she needed to tell him they were okay. Covered in familiar heartbeats and warmth, he fell asleep quickly.

 

* * *

 

 

“Okay kids, it’s time for school. Erica, I need you to come with me to the station so we can report you as found. Your cover story is that you ran away because you were afraid you were a target in the murders at the end of the last school year, and you lived with a relative you refuse to name for the past few months. You’re a minor so we can’t force you to tell us who helped you, you don’t actually have any nearby relatives to implicate, case closed. Stiles and Allison, you can stay home if you need to.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stilinski, but I think my mom and dad would prefer to have the day to work everything out,” Allison answered as they all untangled themselves from each other.

“I’m good dad, sleeping with the pack has me back to new, promise.”

“He’s not lying,” Derek supplied helpfully, tossing each pack member their new clothes, apparently bought on the Argent’s card at a store open until late last night.

“Is Mom awake though? I wanted to see her before I left,” Stiles asked, biting his lip.

“Yeah, she’s up. Do you all have ways to school?”

“Covered, thanks Dad,” he answered, grabbing his backpack and going downstairs.

“You want me to come with you, Erica?” Derek asked her seriously, still not sure what sort of mindspace she was in after coming back from the dead.

“No, it’ll look suspicious. I’m a big girl, Der, I can handle this,” she reassured him with a half-hearted smile.

            He nodded and let the others filter out so it was just him and the Sheriff.

“You just got your wife back, I’ll understand if you don’t want to involve yourself with our pack anymore, it’s dangerous.”

“Son, do me a favor and shut the hell up. Chris and I already talked about this and I may not be a hunter, but I know my way around a gun and I have a duty to protect my family, and that seems to include you and the other kids now too. Stiles never would have discovered this part of himself if not for your family, so in a way I have you to thank for my wife being alive downstairs. I figure, if I’m in on this with you, there’s less chance I’m going to lose my job again because I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“My name is John, use it once in a while. You’re a good guy, Derek, I’m glad the first person my son brought home was you.”

            He nodded, lacking any words to describe his feelings about all this and his throat was too closed to say them at the moment anyway. They headed downstairs, Stiles kissing him goodbye before taking off to drive Boyd to school. Ethan, Aiden, and Danny were being driven by Lydia and Scott and Isaac went with Allison.

“Hey Batman, I fully expect you to get me caught up in school!” Erica called out the door before he started the engine.

“You got it, Catwoman!” He shouted back.

            He couldn’t hide his smile as Stiles fiddled with the gear shift before whipping out and taking off after everyone else. That was his, for as long as he could keep him.

“Wow, you’ve got it bad, Der. But still, consider this your one and only warning from me, you hurt him and I will literally rip your heart out and feed it to you. I love him too.”

“What about Boyd?”

“I can love as many people as I damn well please. Boyd knows at the end of the day he’ll always have me by his side and if he doesn’t it’s his own damn fault.”

            He was infinitely glad he’d bit her, now that she was alive and well again. She’d come into her own so well, confidence radiating from her. She had always been beautiful, he knew that when he’d bit her, but now she had the self-esteem to shove it in everyone’s face without a care in the world. At the moment she might not be happy, still recovering, but she was finding her own way there.

“Time to go, Erica. Derek, Peter and your father went to your loft to grab a few of your things, I think they expect you to be staying here for at least the rest of the day,” John informed him.

            He nodded and watched them go, hoping everything went off without a hitch. He didn’t doubt she’d stop by to tell her mom that she was alive and then come back here. They’d eat ice cream and watch Star Trek Into Darkness on Stiles’s laptop because there was no way the teen didn’t have it on there, he was worse than Danny in that respect. Before they’d had a falling out she’d made him promise to take her to the midnight showing.

            Derek ended up sitting with his mother and Helena in the kitchen, the living room still covered with sleeping werewolves, recounting in mostly vague terms what he’d done up until this point. Stiles’s mother made him pancakes and eggs for breakfast and it wasn’t long before they set upon him for details about Stiles and their relationship. He explained how rough the first half of the year had been, mostly him yelling at Stiles to cut off his arm or run for his fucking life and Talia looked gradually more horrified as he explained what Peter had briefly turned into. Things got harder as he talked about the first half of this year, barely containing his anger at how much danger Stiles had been in with no one to protect him and how much he’d failed the rest of his pack. As he shifted into the Alphas and the Darach things evened out, right now they were winning and Stiles was safe with the pack so there wasn’t much that was difficult to talk about.

“You’ve had an eventful year so far. And you think you can take out the Alphas?” Helena queried, brushing a lose strand of brown hair behind her ear.

“With all three of us working together to lead the Pack, yeah, I definitely think we can.”

“It’s good to know my son is in good hands,” she commented, looking at him fondly.

            He forced himself to relax and not think about all the ways he could fail to protect Stiles, because so far the brunet had done a fantastic job of taking care of himself against impossible odds. Now that Scott had a responsibility to keep everyone in the pack alive he’d hopefully be paying more attention to his best friend, and the rest of the pack would protect the humans at all costs. And if something did happen to Stiles, it wouldn’t be his fault. If he told himself that enough times he’d eventually believe it.

            His father and Peter returned with a few bags of clothes as well as the cake from yesterday and the one delivered today. They said the exact same thing, but he had a feeling he knew who had been making them now. No one but Stiles cared about him enough to try this hard. Guessing his boyfriend wouldn’t complain if he shared the cake with his family he let them eat it with him, surreptitiously watching Peter interact with his wife and two little girls. The creepy uncle he’d known since the fire was completely gone, replaced by a man with an easy smile and bright eyes. Glancing at an envelope on the counter addressed to Stiles in the man’s careful cursive, he didn’t doubt it had enough money in it to keep the teen’s Jeep running for the next few years, maybe even some numbers of people who owed Peter favors.

            When Erica returned they played with the kids in the backyard for a while until they were calm enough to nap again, the blonde giggling and playfully growling almost the entire time. He wasn’t sure if she wanted pups of her own, but he knew she’d be great with Allison’s inevitable children. He wondered how that would work with Scott and Isaac, then realized she could do whatever the hell she wanted because the only people she cared about would love her no matter what.  

“Did you want to watch the newest Trek?” He asked casually, watching her dark eyes light up and a wicked smile curve her lips.

            They found it pretty easily and it was a good quality recording, not that he expected Stiles to have anything but the best in pirated movies, he was picky about odd things. She bit her hand to keep from screaming during the reactor scene and he didn’t blame her, it hit him pretty hard too. If it was him on the outside and Stiles on the inside he would have responded the same way Spock had. It had already come close to happening, with the Darach and her line of ash.

            He braided and unbraided her hair until she fell asleep because it was something her older brother had done to calm her down before he took off for college. It felt nice to do some good with his hands that didn’t involve killing anyone, and the simple monotony of it was relaxing. Once she was soundly asleep he slipped away, grabbing his razor and a change of clothes. Judging by Stiles’s expressions, he preferred his boyfriend on the more five o’clock shadow end of the stubble scale, and he hadn’t shaved in a few days. As much as the werewolf knew the other didn’t stick around just for his appearance it couldn’t hurt to keep himself looking a little nicer.

            Content that at least he wouldn’t scare the neighbors with his facial hair anymore, he sat down and watched some Netflix on Stiles’s account. Before long he heard the sound of the Pack’s vehicles pulling onto the street or into the driveway and he woke Erica gently. They trotted down in their socks to greet the Pack, who burst in triumphant for some reason. The others filtered upstairs, his boyfriend staying behind to talk to him.

“Harris has this weird magic thing on him from working with the Darach where his memories can’t be permanently altered and he remembered during first period, but instead of trying to rat us out, he treats me like I hung the goddamn moon and is giving everyone passing grades for helping me save his sorry ass. Finally things are going right for me,” Stiles beamed, running a hand along his jaw before kissing him.

“Yeah. And, I think I finally got the message, you can stop baking me cakes.”

“Oh, you figured it out? Huh, thought it would take you longer. But don’t think this means I won’t remind you if I think you’ve forgotten.”

“Don’t forget our deal, either.”

“I fixed most of those problems, but yeah, I hear you.”

“Do you want to fix me, still?”

Stiles squinted at him as if he’d been suddenly struck by a surprisingly strong streak of idiocy, “I never wanted to fix you, I just want you to be happy. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a little broken too, and I doubt any amount of effort is going to fix me. I’m just…All I want is to change the things in your life that make you sad, not change the way you are. So maybe you’re kind of an asshole, you’ve been trying more. And yeah, you’re genuinely awful at allowing yourself to have nice things or trusting yourself not to break something from fifty feet away, but I’ll force nice things on you without your consent so it works. But that’s not about sex at all because yeah nothing is happening without consent unless you want it to, consensual nonconsent, you know, we’d negotiate everything beforehand and have safewords and…And now I’m just going to shut up before I go any further into BDSM because holy shit your entire family can hear me.”

“No, go on,” Laura called from the living room.

“You’re kind of kinky for a virgin, aren’t you?” Derek chided, managing to keep a straight face despite everything.

“Just because I haven’t had any doesn’t mean I don’t have a good idea of what I want,” he snapped, huffing before leaning in to whisper in Derek’s ear, “You’re right at the top of that list.”

            It should have been too cliché to be hot but Stiles was so rarely sexual, other than when he rolled his r’s in the way that made Derek uncomfortably aroused from half a mile away, that it worked for him. He pulled the teen in and kissed him hungrily, tongue and teeth and taking what was always freely given. Opening his eyes after a second he barely felt surprised when Stiles followed suit, every once in a while they’d end up in sync and he’d stopped letting it bother him. His eyes were glowing and Derek let his shift red, earning himself a groan as hands fisted in his shirt. If he didn’t stop soon this was going to go way farther than he would have wanted it to once the haze of lust cleared.

“Excuse me, boys, but I’d like to talk to Stiles if you can spare a moment,” Talia interrupted them.

            They sprang apart, Stiles turning a pretty shade of pink before stuttering a ‘yes ma’am’ and following her out into the backyard. It would only give them the illusion of privacy, but it would calm the teen down enough that he might say actual words to her. He stayed downstairs in order to be close in case anything attacked, if he happened to be able to eavesdrop better that way, well, so sue him.

“You can calm down, Stiles, I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to talk to you, I haven’t seen you since you were tiny and now you’re dating my son. You can understand my concern, after what the last person he loved did to him.”

“Let’s be vague about it because no one else has a right to know until he tells them, but, he told you?”

“Yes. You knew?”

“Figured it out before anyone else. I-I told my dad, made him promise never to tell, but he said he told Derek, and I guess Derek doesn’t want to kill me, so Dad knowing is okay. I think. I didn’t want to be alone, I didn’t want to be the only one who knew. It wasn’t mine to share, but it wasn’t really my cross to bear either. And hell, maybe Derek has been waiting for someone to find out since it happened, so he can finally talk about it with someone, or have at least one person know and not want to kill him over it. I would sooner put a bullet in my brain than let anyone do that to Derek again, much less do it myself. I love him.”

            It took his breath away, to hear Stiles’s conviction in his heartbeat when he spoke those last words, to know that it was as true as it could be. People change, feelings fade, but for the moment his boyfriend loved him without reservation. It might have been tentative but at least it was real.

“Considering you brought all of us back for him, even if I wasn’t a werewolf I would probably believe you. That’s a lot of effort for someone you’re just going to break again. So tell me, what other magic can you do?”

“At the moment I only have proficiency in protection and fire magic. Burns are something that take werewolves a while to heal, since so many cells are damaged. My protection spells are strong enough that Deucalion and his two remaining Alphas couldn’t break through it, but it’s only that strong when the Pack is with me. The longer the distance, the weaker the feedback loop gets. Their protection doesn’t change very much, but mine will. If for some reason I lost faith in the Pack it would fail to work completely, and it gets weaker with each member of the Pack that’s not present.”

“So it’s important that the Pack never leaves you completely alone, and really that all of you stick together until the Alpha Pack is gone, correct? Why didn’t you tell Derek that, he would have wanted to go to school with you.”

“Most of the pack was there, that defense would have been enough to keep me from getting killed until they could beat Duke off.”

“I don’t think my son appreciates your logic, judging by his heartbeat.”

“Yeah, well, I’m already going to get my head bitten off whenever we have a moment alone that doesn’t devolve into making out, after the whole not telling him I was the final sacrifice and offering myself up as bait fiasco.”

            It said a lot about everything that had happened that it hadn’t yet occurred to him that Stiles had intentionally hidden the knowledge that he was the capstone sacrifice from the Pack. He was angry about that, but Stiles probably genuinely didn’t know it was him until the face off with Deucalion, the other Alpha’s words ringing in his head now about Stiles being his little soldier. Stiles, the knight in plaid armor showing up to save his prince from everything.

Talia must have given him a look because he got defensive, “Look, I know I shouldn’t have offered myself up as a trade for Derek, but I had a plan, and it worked, and Scott agreed to it. We had a two-thirds majority with one abstention due to being on the verge of death, that’s totally democratic.”  
  
“Was it your idea to have three pack leaders?”

“Yeah, we all have massive faults in our leadership and that’s okay because not everyone can be Lydia Martin, but without having someone to cover for us, the Pack would have fallen apart. Derek doesn’t always think things through because he’s so used to having things taken away he thinks the faster he tries to do something the better the chance it won’t be completely wrecked, half of Scott’s ideas are just the worst things I’ve ever heard of and there are snuggies in this competition, and I’m a little too likely to sacrifice myself or do everything on my own if left to my own devices. So Derek and Scott prevent me from getting myself killed, Scott and I help Derek plan things a little better, and Derek and I tell Scott how fucking crazy some of his ideas are. Did you know he seriously talked about just negotiating with the Alpha Pack? Their entire reason for being here is to make Derek kill all of us and take our power, how the hell can we negotiate with that level of crazy?”

“And the rest of the pack will defer to you even though you’re not an Alpha, not even a werewolf? Ethan and Aiden included?”

“Derek’s rescue was one-hundred-percent me. All Scott did was keep the Pack from exploding when I started screaming in pain. I’m sure everyone has different reasons for following my orders, but even Ethan and Aiden don’t fight it. There is…the protection spell, I used one that would tie me to the Pack, in a pretty eternal fashion, so even if I’m human, I can sort of feel everyone a little bit. Like if Boyd gets tackled I’ll get a little tug. I don’t know why I ended up screaming until I nearly passed out when Derek was shot, it felt like someone had lit me on fire from the inside out. Everyone thought I was dying, that’s part of how she got away without us catching her. So I guess Derek’s rescue was necessitated by me too.”

“What did we talk about, Stiles? She was the one who took me, not you,” he couldn’t help but call out into the yard, the other two already knowing he was listening in anyway.

“Oh my god, just come out here, loverwolf, it’s not like there’s ever any real privacy with you wolves around.”

            He walked out and sat down with them, content to just stare out into the woods and watch for anything coming. Paranoia was a skill rather than a condition, at least at this stage of the game.

“So why do you think it hurt so bad when Derek was injured?”

“I was going to ask Deaton, but I sort of forgot. Lot of things happened.”

“I’m a bit more of an expert on magic and werewolves than you are, and to me, it sounds like you formed a mate bond with him. The bond between an Alpha and their mate is much like you describe, far stronger than that between just regular pack members. Though normally if there’s a human in the pairing they don’t get the feedback like the werewolf does, your magic seems to have made you an exception.”

“I didn’t…I didn’t doom Derek to be my husband forever even if he doesn’t want to be, right? Because he should have a choice and that’s not what I wanted to do.”

“No, it’s not that sort of bond. It’s more like you’ll be closely connected for as long as you’re together. It’ll drift back into a regular pack bond if you break up.”

“So if I get hurt the same thing happens to Derek? But the protection spell I put on him was intended to protect against me too, whereas the one I put on myself can’t protect against Pack. Derek, did you feel anything earlier today, like around ten?”  
  
“No, why?”

“I sorta fell down the stairs, so if you didn’t feel anything, the spell must protect you from the pain feedback. I healed the damage from the fall and I’m fine, I’ve gotten a little better with healing spells so they no longer make me black out and almost die. Not…Not that they ever did,” he lied, making the face again where he winced and stretched his mouth out in various agonized ways.

            He was beginning to hate that expression; lately it just meant that Stiles had almost killed himself again. If he knew anything about the brunet, he would just keep on making it and manage to survive by only the smallest margin. Oh how he would shatter if ever Stiles stopped pulling through.

“Deaton has done a rather poor job of training you, I believe I’ll have to have a _conversation_ with him about protecting my possible future son-in-law from magical misadventures,” Talia commented, a single claw flicking out of her right hand to punctuate her words.

“Are all moms this scary, or just the ones I know?”

“All moms. I just happen to be an Alpha, making me much more able to make good on threats of bodily harm. Deaton is a good man, he just enjoys being enigmatic too much. I suppose being dramatic would be something his line of work would foster. So, why did you permanently tie your life force to the Pack? I know the spell you’re talking about, and it’s dangerous and generally only used on the caster and the caster’s partner.”

“Because I love the Pack. I love Derek and I love the Pack and I’m never leaving. Even if they tried to throw me out, I’d be happier dead than without them. They’re everything I have.”

            Suddenly, threatening Stiles with kicking him out of the pack seemed like the worst idea. His wording was unintentionally sinister, and while Derek didn’t think Stiles would actually kill himself, putting himself into a situation where he would almost certainly die was his modus operandi and all he would need to do is will himself not to come out the other side. No matter what Stiles did, he didn’t want to lose the teen.

“So, you’re a human, who accidentally mated yourself to an Alpha, is leading a pack of werewolves and humans as an Alpha, as well as being a magic-user capable of hijacking spells and protecting your pack with literally everything that you are. You’re an interesting boy, Stiles. I suppose I should have expected as much, with your parents being the way they are.”

“My parents are normal, I’m the black sheep of the family.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Stiles,” Derek warned, not liking his tone.

            It wasn’t hard to remember the other crying in front of his father because he assumed his escapades with the wolves were ruining the Sheriff’s life. Stiles should be proud of who he was, he managed to be more than the sum of his parts, quite seriously by nothing more than sheer force of will.

“I simply meant that both of your parents are impressive in their own way. You got your father’s ability to piece things together and your mother gave you magic more powerful than either of your lineages would have provided you. I’m not sure where the genius part comes in, but Derek insists that you are one and I don’t see much reason to deny it so far.”

“Well, Lydia doesn’t let me be one half of Team Genius for nothing, I guess. And she even lets me call us that,” he added with a smile.

            Talia returned the expression and seemed happy enough with the talk, letting them go inside to watch a massive marvel movie marathon with the entire Hale family, because they’d missed everything and this was as good a place to start as any. Stiles drew comparisons between Scott and Captain America, Lydia and Black Widow, Hawkeye and Allison, Isaac and Tony Stark, claimed Boyd and Erica were a young Rhodey and Pepper, and muttered about how he and Derek were a more aggressive, issues-laden version of Thor and Jane. He wasn’t sure who Danny, Ethan, and Aiden were yet in the Marvel universe. Derek wondered if he omitted Cora and Peter from the pack intentionally, or if the knowledge that they had slipped back into the Hale pack was just instinctual for him. Never having been human, he couldn’t have known.

“Wait so does that mean Cap, Hawkeye, and Tony are in a threesome?” Erica asked, before continuing, “That’s cute, I ship it.”

            It was probably telling about how not-subtle the three were being that Erica had been alive for a day and already knew they were together.

“I’m more concerned that Stiles is a badass yet he assigned himself a character with no powers. Yeah, she’s an amazing woman and a genius, but she doesn’t fight. It’s not the best fit,” Allison counters.

“Well, it was Thor and Sif that got married in some of the comics, not him and Jane. She’s intelligent, not a genius, but I think it’s a better fit considering she’s a female warrior who’s stronger than most of her male counterparts. Like Stiles is a human but could still kick my ass if he wanted to,” Isaac chimed in.

“I could see Sif and Natasha getting along beautifully,” the redhead mused, green eyes thoughtful.

“Plotting world domination, maybe,” Derek spoke up, startlingly unafraid of ruining anything with his words.

            It had been a long time since he felt that way with anyone, much less a pack that could leave him.

“Obviously. Our thirty-year plan is that I become President with Stiles as my running mate.”

“I assume by then being an FBI agent with cybersecurity and unsolved murder focus would be an important enough career to warrant me being on a presidential ballot.”

“Please, Stiles, by then you’ll be refusing offers to head the program just so you can run with me, be realistic,” she said, rolling her eyes at his underestimation of himself.

“Oh god, I just realized I’ll have to put up with everyone knowing my real name.”

“We all have to make sacrifices for our country, Stiles.”

            Now that he knew what Stiles wanted to be, it made complete sense. As an agent he could put his mind to use helping catch criminals, and knowing about supernatural things would help him on more difficult cases. Derek found he wanted to be there with him, and working as a deputy for a while might very well help him get there. That is, if Stiles actually wanted Derek by his side in a few years.

            He pulled Stiles aside after most of the Hale Pack had gone to bed, apprehension clear in the set of the teen’s mouth. They really, really needed to talk about this, and if they didn’t do it now he might not get another chance for a while.

“You didn’t know for sure, right?”

“Not until the fight in the loft. I put off talking about it because I didn’t want everyone to freak out and try to protect me from something that might not even be coming for me. When I knew it was me, I just never got the chance to tell you before you were taken.”

“You used yourself as bait, Stiles, that’s not an acceptable thing. What if she’d been stronger than you thought? We could have lost you. I could have lost you.”

“I knew she wasn’t stronger than me, but in the future I won’t be operating with that knowledge, and I promise I won’t use myself as bait again unless there’s no other way. I know no one will be able to handle losing me well, but you keep forgetting you’re our Alpha too, we can’t lose you either. We both need to be careful with our lives, because it’s gonna be shit if this pack has to ever operate without one of us.”

            He pulled Stiles into a hug, running a hand through his hair before pulling back and kissing his anxiety away. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on what would happen if they lost one of the Alphas. Tracing a few of Stiles’s moles with his fingers, he didn’t speak, just lead him upstairs to the bedroom where the rest of the Pack was waiting for them.

            They all piled into bed far too late at night for the humans, but maybe being in a pack would help them operate on less sleep just like their supernatural companions. Or they’d just muddle through because they were sturdy like that; he’d seen Stiles go for days without sleeping and even if he made less and less sense as time wore on, he’d been fine. As they all slipped away into unconsciousness, he hoped this was the start of something that would stay for a very long time.

 

* * *

 

            Harris was letting Scott retake a test from earlier in the year to help make his improving grade in the class more believable at Stiles’s behest, so he wouldn’t be back until later. The pack meeting at the loft wasn’t until after practice at six, and when he felt the tug of an injured packmate he ignored it; it wasn’t a bad injury, Isaac probably just got slammed by Boyd during practice, they always played too rough. Glancing down when his phone buzzed, he pulled it out to find Scott calling him, probably just minutes out of his test.

“Yeah, Scott?”

“They’re gone,” he was out of breath, “Isaac and Allison are gone. Deucalion left a note on Allison’s windshield that he’d taken something of mine. We need to find them, message the pack, I think I can feel them in the direction of the west end of town, tell everyone to meet me at the old mill out there.”

“Got it, and Scott? Don’t panic.”

            He sent a mass text explaining the situation in as few characters as he could and tore through town in the Camaro, most traffic recognizing the car and getting the hell out of the way. Once he hit the woods near the mill abandoned but left standing twenty years ago because it was privately owned, he ran out and took off in his wolf form. Scott had moved ahead of everyone, rushing in like a moron, already freeing an unconscious Allison and Isaac from their bindings and trying to wake them up. Derek stood next to him and kept an eye out while he worked as the rest of the pack filtered in frantically.

            When he did a head count, he came up one short, but Stiles was on the opposite end of town and it would take him longer to get here than Lydia and Danny. The others had just run, judging by all the panting they were doing.

“Good job Scott, you found your packmates so quickly. What a good little Alpha you are,” Deucalion congratulated from a platform on the second level, clapping slowly.

“Why did you take them, Deucalion?” He roared, standing between the slowly rousing teens and the blind werewolf.

“I wanted to test to see how observant you were when your mates were taken.”

“What do you mean? You wanted me to find them, that’s it?”

            Deucalion made a clucking sound and Derek noticed that he was alone, no other heartbeats but his and the Pack’s in the building. Hackles raised, he wanted to know why Kali and Ennis weren’t present. Did he really think he could take on the Pack without them?

“Tell me, _Scotty_ , don’t you have a niggling feeling in the back of your one-track mind that you passed right over a vital detail?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Does Stiles usually go home while leaving his Jeep in the parking lot? Or text you when he knows you’re taking a test?”

            Scott immediately paled, pulling out his phone with frantic hands and opening the text he had apparently not looked at, making a choked noise before holding it out to the Pack. It said simply ‘help’ and was sent over half an hour ago. Kali and Ennis had had Stiles to themselves for at least that long and Scott didn’t even notice the blue Jeep sitting right next to Allison’s car. Derek was going to kill him. As soon as Stiles was back in safe hands, Scott McCall was going to die.

“Let’s see how he’s doing, shall we?” The leader of the Alpha pack asked smugly, pulling out his phone and dialing blind.

“Stiles, any messages you want to pass on to the pack?”

            The phone was set on speaker and even the humans could hear a loud crack and Stiles’s scream as one of his bones were broken. He sounded tired, almost, like this wasn’t the first time they’d smashed something on him. Derek had never been more ready to kill everything in sight in his life.

“Hale house!” He shouted just before breaking off into a moan and ragged breathing, swearing under his breath.

“Oh, such a show of strength for your companions. You’ll make a fine addition, Stiles.”

“Fuck. You,” he hissed, punctuating each word, and the line went dead.

            He wanted so badly to run to his boyfriend’s side, but it would take minutes for them to tear Deucalion apart as angry as they were, and they needed to take their chance while they could. Saying as much, he watched as faces turned from horror to resolve, Erica nearly foaming at the mouth in her rage. The humans stayed on the ground floor while their wolf counterparts jumped the stairs to the second level, converging on Deucalion.

            His power was immense, but their fury was absolute. Isaac got sent through a wall by a swing from the twisted half-human, half-wolf form of the Demon Wolf, but Erica took his place and held fast under Deucalion’s fist, snarling and biting down into his arm as he tried to crush her. Pulling her legs back, she slammed both feet into his knee and it buckled, bone turned dust under over a ton of total pressure. Derek and Boyd got a grip on both his arms and pulled to either side while he howled and fell to his good knee, Ethan and Aiden burying their claws into his belly as Erica recovered Isaac from the rubble. They both scurried around to his back and dug into the muscles there, Isaac pulling his head back as far as he could. Scott took the opening and jumped on the twins to tear Deucalion’s throat out with his teeth in a vicious jerk. Apparently he wasn’t willing to talk things out any longer.

            The oldest of them tore his head off the rest of the way to be sure while Scott changed, stumbling like a drunk as his eyes flashed red. He wasn’t a born werewolf, the power was always disorienting at first for made wolves that ended up Alphas. Ethan and Aiden quickly shredded the rest of the body, Lydia using a can of hair spray and a lighter to burn it to a crisp, then put a healthy dusting of wolfsbane over the remains. Maybe it wasn’t necessary, but it certainly made them all feel better.  
  
            He was already bounding toward the old house before Scott had completely stabilized; his mates were with him, he would be fine if he had an ounce of sense left in him. Besides, maybe Derek didn’t give a fuck if Scott lived or died right now, maybe whether Scott lived or died largely depended on if Stiles was still alive when he got there. Derek wasn’t a good person, he wouldn’t begrudge himself that revenge, especially knowing Erica would take it if he didn’t. He didn’t need her to have any more blood on her hands than she already did.

            Lacking any patience, he slammed through the side of the building instead of rounding it to the front entrance, the supports protesting but holding regardless. The flying debris missed Stiles, who was sitting on the floor with his legs out, facing away from Derek. His hands lay at his sides, one of them clearly broken, both of them palms up like he was too far into shock to twist them over to settle more naturally. He was covered in blood, breathing wet, and he didn’t seem to react to his boyfriend’s entrance at all.

            Kali and Ennis, or what still remained of them, were charred off to either side of him, bodies looking like they were in the process of escaping when they were suddenly hit by an extremely hot flame. The air reeked of magic and pain and sadness.

“Jesus, Stiles. Where does it hurt the worst? I need to know how to lift you to get you to a hospital,” he asked as he walked around the teen, giving him a wide enough berth that he wouldn’t jump.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’m…they’re…healing. Th-they’re healing. Just…taking longer because they’re from Alphas.”

            He felt his heart stop, then slam against his ribs in double time, and by the way Stiles’s head jerked up to look at him, he heard it too. Fuck. No.

“What do you mean, Stiles? What do you mean you’re healing?” He needed to hear it, he needed immediate confirmation of one of his worst fears.

Stiles held his gaze for a moment before his eyes shifted to red and lifted one corner of his mouth to show fangs, “I tried to fight it, but they kept hurting me until I had to focus all my energy on just keeping myself alive and it just…took hold. I got so angry, I was so furious that they had taken the choice away from me, I had a red-out and when I got back to myself they were dead. I guess Scott can stop blaming you for not getting back his humanity by killing Peter, it wouldn’t have worked.”

            He sounded small, broken. Derek’s world was threatening to crumble around him, but Stiles said he wanted to be there when everything fell apart, so Derek would be there for him. Just because he was an Alpha didn’t mean anything had changed between them, he just needed to convince Stiles that losing his humanity wouldn’t make him lose everyone else too.

“I’ll help you kill Scott, if you want.”

Stiles smiled bitterly, “Nah, rather do it by myself if you don’t mind. I won’t kill him, but I’m going to rip him a new one. Do you…Are we still?”

“Stiles, I can’t believe you’d ever ask me that. Of course I still love you, of course we’re still together. You’re my mate, the ground literally caving in between us couldn’t keep me from you for long. The full moon is in three days though, and now Scott is a new Alpha and you’re a new wolf and a new Alpha.”

“You’re my anchor.”

            He was terrified of those words, but he could do this. He could try, for Stiles, because Stiles was everything good that he didn’t deserve, that he should have to earn. Kneeling down, he pulled Stiles into his arms and held him close, feeling their heartbeats sync. Derek could be a rock in the storm, his life was finally looking up and this was a small price to pay to keep it that way.

“I’ll get you through this then. The Pack’s here, who do you want to come in?”

“I need to talk to Lydia first, then I can handle them.”

            Derek shouted for the strawberry blonde, who walked in with confident strides but a terrified expression on her face.

“Oh my god, Stiles. You’re not dying, are you?”

“No, Lyds, I’m not dying, not in the way you think anyway.”

            He let her see his eyes and she gasped, putting a hand to her mouth and rushing to his side instead of away. It wasn’t hard to see why the entire world loved Lydia Martin.

“Tell me what you need, Stiles,” she asked, putting her hands on his face comfortingly.

“Can I still be one half of Team Genius?” He asked quietly, barely above a whisper.

“Say something intelligent.”

“The triangle is the most structurally sound building block, and the triad the strongest type of friendship group, most large group structures are composed of triads, and triangles have been a source of worship for many cultures for centuries, werewolves included.”

“Yes, you can still be the cuter half of Team Genius, Stiles. This changes nothing, except I expect you to do better on the field.”

“You promise? Swear on my mother’s missing grave?”

“I swear,” she answered quietly, wiping away one of his tears.

“Thank you. The others…everyone but Scott. I want to deal with Scott last. I know you guys can hear this.”

            They filtered in, curling around him protectively like they had before. It was instinct, he realized, even the humans felt the need to protect Stiles, even if he wasn’t human anymore, even if it was from himself. Erica was trying desperately not to cry, nose buried in the new wolf’s belly. The scent of anger and devastation was overwhelming, but there was nothing but acceptance from them.

“You’ll always be Stiles. No matter what you become,” Allison reminded him, adamant.

“We love you,” Isaac added, stroking his arm gently.

            They stayed that way for several minutes, until the blood had seeped out of Stiles’s lungs and back into his body and his major organs were working properly again. As they lifted themselves off him at his request, he had Derek help him up, broken leg still shaky as it mended.

“Scott, get the fuck in here,” he snarled, eyes flashing orange instead of gold or red.

            His best friend shuffled in, head down, neck bared submissively. He knew he’d fucked up but it did nothing to assuage the anger Derek felt, he couldn’t imagine how Stiles was holding himself together right now instead of blowing up right away.

“Stiles, I-”

“No, don’t you fucking make a goddamn excuse or say you’re sorry, because you know what? This is not the first fucking time I came last in your world and got hurt because of it. Derek and I almost fucking drowned because you were with Allison and couldn’t think straight enough to realize if I was calling you it might be an emergency, I got my face smashed in by a fucking geriatric and you didn’t even ask if I was okay because you were too busy with Allison, and now Deucalion took Isaac and Allison, who you could feel were fine, and I got fucking tortured for an hour and turned into a werewolf because you apparently went literally blind and didn’t see my Jeep or the text I sent you. I know what happened to me isn’t your fault, but fuck, dude, you’re my brother, you could have at least noticed I was missing and helped me through my transformation. Do you have any idea what it feels like to realize one of the most important people in your life gives literally zero fucks about you if someone else is on their mind?

“Look, I’m sorry if…I’m sorry if I’m not being fucking fair to you, because yeah, when Derek was gone I freaked out too, I know how that is. But…fuck Scott, I’m so tired of coming out last in line in your eyes. I’m literally so far down the list of people you care about you don’t even notice me anymore. That-that hurts. I wish you wouldn’t take me for granted, because if I wasn’t useful to those wolves, I would be dead right now. You don’t have to put me first, just put me anywhere in your list of priorities. I’ll take anywhere.”

“I’ll do better, Stiles. I know I told you I’d do better, and I didn’t, but I hope you can forgive me. I understand if you don’t believe me this time…But every time before you were okay, sort of. I took you making it through for granted and this time you didn’t. I won’t let this happen again, to any of the Pack, least of all you.”

“We’ve been friends for pretty much our entire lives, so I guess I can forgive you. Next time you’re out of the Pack.”

            Scott nodded solemnly, eyes hopeful. His best friend shook his head before pulling him into a literally bone-crushing hug, a few of his vertebrae creaking. It felt good, the tension in Derek’s gut finally uncoiling as everything within the group was resolved. He was still angry, but if Stiles wasn’t going to kill Scott, Derek hardly had any right to it.

            His boyfriend’s knees gave out and Scott held him, up, frantic. Derek lifted him into his arms immediately, growling at the other teen when Scott tried to reach out for him. Stiles’s body was still going through the process of becoming a werewolf and it was twice as stressful because he was also undergoing the change into an Alpha. It was incredibly doubtful that it would kill him, but Derek had no idea what the side effects would be since he didn’t know of any situation where something like this had happened before.

“I’m okay. Just…hurts. I need…shit. I have to tell Mom and Dad,” he whispered in horror, curling in on himself like a person trying to press their internal organs back into their body for a few extra seconds of terrified desperation.

            Derek wished he didn’t know what that looked like. He wished Stiles didn’t look like that now, regardless of the lack of actual fatal wounds. Sitting down on the steps, he tossed his keys to Danny and told him not to crash the car getting it back here, that Stiles was in no condition to be running or even riding on a werewolf’s back like the other humans had to get here. Twenty minutes later the Camaro appeared, free of any damage, and the three remaining humans piled into the back, Stiles in the passenger seat pressed against the door like he might jump out at any moment.

“Stiles, your dad doesn’t get off for another two hours, you should call him, tell him to come home early.”

“I’m not going to make him leave work for this.”

“If something like this happened to me, wouldn’t you want to know right away? You know your mom is going to call him the instant you tell her.”

            He sighed and dialed the number for the station, asking for his dad in a broken tone.

_“Stiles? What’s wrong, are you okay?”_

“We’re on our way home, Dad, and I really need you to be there when I arrive. It’s…I just need you to be home.”

_“Of course, Stiles, I’m on my way out now. Deputy Carter will cover the rest of my shift, it’s been quiet.”_

“I’ll see you when we get there, Dad. I love you.”

_“Love you too, Son.”_

            The rest of the drive passed in such oppressive silence he could hear the heartbeats of the wolves running toward the house parallel the car without even trying. He hated this, was thankful that at the very least they’d only ever have to deal with this once for Stiles. Once was too much, but he couldn’t go through this again.

            He pulled Stiles out of his seat once they pulled up to the house, not certain either of them trusted him to be able to walk on his own yet. The cruiser was already in the driveway, engine still hot, and the door swung in before they were to it to reveal the extended pack waiting. Victoria probably felt the change; a new Alpha falling into the pack was something she could have sensed just about anywhere, regardless of her lack of close bond with them. He wasn’t sure why Melissa was here, maybe the Sheriff had assumed someone might need patching up.

“Jesus, Stiles, you’re covered in blood. Did you heal yourself, or are you just skipping the hospital and hoping Melissa can handle your injuries?”

“My injuries are pretty much healed, but I didn’t use a spell.”

            Derek set him down on the couch, landing next to him and pressing them together from knee to shoulder, as supportive as he could manage to be physically. Stiles needed to face this himself, but he didn’t need to do it alone. John wore a confused expression, worry still painting his features. He seemed to be waiting for a further explanation.

“They healed on their own. I-The Alphas blindsided us, and I got turned,” he finished, amber eyes flushing carmine as he looked at his parents.

            The Sheriff’s body sagged like a weight had settled on it, but he pulled Stiles into his arms regardless, holding him tight as Helena enveloped him in a hug from behind. He could smell their tears, but they weren’t scared, or disgusted. It wasn’t something that had really crossed his mind as a possibility, but it was good to know he wasn’t wrong about that for once. Once they’d calmed each other down the whole situation was explained, Melissa’s eyes cutting toward her son harshly when they found out that Scott had completely missed the fact that Stiles had been taken, but Stiles insisted that it was a mistake and it would be learned from, to which Scott nodded emphatically.

            They were all just so young.

“So there are three bodies that need to be disposed of. Chris and I are well-versed in the destruction of werewolf remains, we’ll finish the job, make sure nothing that could be traced back to us is left,” Victoria announced before leading her husband out the door.

            He let them go, despite knowing that they needed to discuss hierarchy and taking orders with the older members of the Pack. As much as it was obvious they weren’t going to just blindly follow the orders of children, they should at least run major movements by their triumvirate of leaders before executing them. It was a battle for another day, when they weren’t licking literal and figurative wounds from the previous one. At least the Hale clan had moved into a rental home for the time being, leaving the living room free for them to pile blankets and pillows on the floor until they’d made a nest large enough for the pack to sleep comfortably. John and Helena slept curled to one side of the ‘puppy pile’ as Stiles insisted they term it, Stiles at the very center of all of them. When the two Argents return four hours later, they take their post to the opposite side of the Stilinskis, close to where Allison was tangled up with everyone else.  
  
            Derek doesn’t sleep, just listens to their heartbeats fall in and out of sync. The human’s hearts do it once in a while, which is typical, but the werewolves all have matching pulses while they sleep. At least when Stiles was awake his natural tempo was unchanged from the original fast pace it had; his boyfriend wouldn’t have to relearn his heartbeat along with everything else. He smelled slightly different now, the scent of werewolf and the thicker scent of pack mingling with everything else the green-eyed man was used to. Hopefully soon he’d manage to remove the negative connotation of it from his mind, but for now it just made him uneasy to know how close he’d come to losing everything.

            The sun comes up and they all grudgingly go to school, reminded that the full moon is now two nights away and everyone is calling in sick both the day of and the day after to brave their first full moon with both Stiles and Scott as Alphas. Even if he could anchor Stiles, it wasn’t going to be easy, pretty, or end without some minor bloodshed. Danny, Lydia, Erica, and Boyd had all already talked to their parents about the need to have those days off. Maybe it was testament to all the trauma they’d faced in the past year that no one asked why.

            A hand fell on his shoulder and he didn’t jump; he’d heard the Sheriff coming up on him from where he was still sitting on the couch, silently contemplating everything. John sat down in his recliner to the left of the couch, looking at Derek thoughtfully. He wasn’t angry, he never blamed the Alpha for what happened to his son.

“So, the Alpha Pack’s out of the way, aren’t they?”

            He stared dumbly at the man for a full ten seconds before he remembered their deal. It seemed like such a long time ago already, but it wasn’t. Beacon Hills seriously needed a vacation from everything supernatural, and maybe if Stiles was acting as deterrent, they would actually get one. Until the hunters set upon them.

“Yeah, I guess they are. When do you want me to start? And…I’d like some of those numbers, if that’s still an option.”

“Of course it is, I’m glad to hear you say that, Deputy Hale. It’s up to you if you call or not, and if it doesn’t work out, at least you can say you tried. Deaton told me which of the people on my list were supernaturally knowledgeable and friendly to werewolves. Apparently there are two of them that are actually bound by a vow of silence never to speak of their mythical clients or they’ll die, I starred them for you. I thought it might be easier if you could just tell them everything, without having to hide who you are. You can start whenever feels right after the full moon passes. I’ll make sure you have those days off if you do decide to go full-time.”

            He slipped the note in his back pocket, amazed by the amount of effort people put into trying to help him. This was a real pack, all working together to help their members heal, even if the hurt one was an Alpha. They were stronger together because the fastest healing rate of any magical creature couldn’t compare to having someone to fight for you when you were bleeding, or to take a few hits on your behalf when they could; that was the only reason they’d prevailed against the Alpha Pack. If they could all stay together, they’d become one of the largest stable packs that weren’t blood-related on this side of the country. He offered the Sheriff a small smile.

“Thank you, this means a lot, and,” he paused, thinking for a moment, “You should call me Derek, when we’re not on the clock.”

“I should warn you, Stiles is probably going to take to calling you Deputy Derek.”

He grinned down at his hands, “I’ve been looking forward to it, actually.”

            John looked fond, either of his son or Derek, maybe both. It was nice; he may have gotten his father back, but he still hadn’t had any time to bond with his family again. He hoped they’d be back to as normal as things could be again by the time the Pack went off to college. Of course, he’d have to follow them there; maybe he could request a transfer to the local police department in the university town they ended up in by then. He had to stay with them somehow, being away for too long might literally kill him or them, with the attention they were likely to attract.

“I know you and Stiles are dating, but is everything alright? I can talk with him if he’s being difficult about…”

“No, it’s been fine. He’s been understanding, and I’m sure he’s more bothered than he lets on, but he seems content with us just dating. Not that we’ve been on an actual date.”

“By the look on your face you plan to change that, though.”

“I’d like to at least take him to the movies or something before a hunter tries to murder him.”

            He flinched, realizing too late that just because John was Pack didn’t mean he needed to know that hunters would be coming as soon as word of Stiles spread. Life was easier when he didn’t talk. It hurt a lot worse, because he didn’t have Stiles, or even a Pack to speak of, but it was easier to navigate without fucking up.

“We should talk to Victoria and Chris about our options regarding that. The Argent family has fallen hard with them, as far as I can gather, and them joining the Pack probably won’t look good, but they might be able to sway a few families with whom they have old ties. Or at the very least, prepare us for what’s coming. I don’t care if they’re human or not, I will kill them if I have to. They’re not taking my son,” the last sentence was said with such vehemence that Derek almost felt threatened, even if he knew on an intellectual level that he wasn’t in any danger from the Sheriff.

            Their relationship had its ups and downs, but John loved his son desperately.

“No one will take Stiles from us. The Pack will keep him safe, even if this time we didn’t.”

“Scott’s a good kid, but he’s just a kid. I’m furious that his mistake hurt my child, but I can hardly place the blame squarely on his shoulders. He may not be as smart as Stiles or Lydia, but I don’t really think anyone is and he’s bright in his own way. He’ll learn. Not the way I wanted him to learn this lesson, but I’m sure it’ll take.”

“This can only happen once.”

“And it will make Stiles much harder to kill from now on, I know. It’s just…He wanted it to be his choice, and he wanted you to do it when he decided. He said he wanted to get the bite at the end of the school year, so everyone had the summer to learn how to handle him. His exact words were ‘I need to be able to understand the Pack on their level if I’m going to lead them, and I need them to not have to worry about my fragile human bones’.”

            He whined, low in his throat but loud enough that the Sheriff’s blue eyes snapped to him worriedly. It hurt, knowing that Stiles had wanted the bite from him and he hadn’t been able to do that for him, that Stiles wanted it so he could do better by them. Gripping his thighs tightly, he forced himself back into the conversation instead of retreating.

“I sincerely wish I could have given him what he wanted. I never asked him about the bite, I wouldn’t have pressured him into it.”

“Stiles can’t be pressured into anything. Hell, he can’t be outright threatened into anything, I’ve tried. I love my son more than anything, more than my wife, he’s the most precious thing in my life, and I am still not concerned that you are going to abuse him. If he says you did, I will believe him and ensure that you spend the rest of your days in a sedated haze, but you don’t need to keep trying to convince me you’re not. Now, I need to know what the full moon entails. Should I be worried for the people of Beacon Hills?”

            He briefly explained what every made-wolf goes through during their first few full moons, how they can be controlled by their Alpha some of the time, by their anchor all of the time. Going further into what an anchor was, he listed a few of the anchors he knew of. His anger used to be his, his Pack has taken its place, how Isaac learned to control himself because of his dad, Allison being Scott’s rock in the bloodlust.

“So I’m going to guess Stiles’s anchor, if he’s found one, will either be you or the Pack.”

“It’s me. If something happens between us, he will always have the Pack.”

“You won’t kick him out?”

He laughed despite himself, “I would never. I don’t think anyone would let me either, he’s the one they all love. If anything, I’d get kicked out.”

“Stiles wouldn’t do that.”

“No, he’s too good to be petty like that.”

“Have you told Talia what’s happened? You should, if nothing else, she might be able to help the Pack out two nights from now.”

            He took the Sheriff’s advice, setting an alarm on his phone so he’d be back in time for everyone to get home. His mother welcomed him with a hug, pulling him inside before he could say anything and sitting him down so she could make him a snack, somehow knowing he hadn’t eaten in a while. It made him feel small and protected, loved. Like his shoulders didn’t need to be broad enough to carry the world. He enjoyed this more than anyone would ever know, but he knew by her expression that Talia had some inkling.

“Stiles got taken and turned, he’s an Alpha,” he blurted out halfway through his sandwich.

“I’m so sorry, my little wolf. Finish your sandwich and tell me what happened,” she instructed, grabbing hold of the hand he wasn’t using to eat.

            His father came in and sat next to him, both of them listening intently as he retold the story. They seemed troubled, but not to the point where he was going to panic.

“I need to know how bad Stiles is going to be. I’m his anchor, but I have no experience with taming an Alpha. I could barely handle my Betas.”

“Well, he already has an anchor, so at least you have a chance. There’s an old tale, a few hundred years ago a girl who ran with wolves was turned, then killed her captor and became an Alpha. She didn’t have a strong enough anchor with her Pack, so she ran off into the night on the full moon and lost herself. She never regained her human form, roamed the countryside as a massive reddish-black wolf. The story got changed almost completely by witches and werewolves who retold it to keep the humans out of the loop; they call her Red Riding Hood now. She’s the only person we know of who was turned and then became an Alpha before their first full moon. Stiles has a much stronger bond with your pack, but he can also use magic, making him twice as dangerous. My suggestion would be to run in the woods, all of you together, on the night of the full moon. Our pack will be surrounding the preserve and will slow him down if he gets loose.”

“I won’t risk you, not again.”

“On the full moon Stiles won’t have his wits about him enough to properly fight a born wolf, and he’s a small teenager. Your brothers are considerably stronger because they’ve trained their bodies, he might be three times as strong as he was, but he’s still no match for them. Or you. If it comes to it, slash his leg tendons, prevent his escape. I know you don’t want to, but if it saves innocent lives I expect you to do what’s necessary.”

“I’ll talk it over with him and the Pack, discuss what he wants us to do. He puts others first, he’ll agree to what he thinks is the best way of taking him down if it comes to that.”

            Derek doesn’t think it will, has a pretty healthy appreciation for the amount of control Stiles has over himself. He makes a mental note to suggest morning training to Stiles, something they can both do together until the teen is a little bulkier. His magic and mind were still his biggest assets, but they didn’t have to be the only two he had. It would also make his sudden ability at lacrosse seem slightly more believable, though if no one had been surprised when the tiny asthmatic became co-captain he doubted anyone would when Stiles made first line and actually got off the bench.

“Scott’s an Alpha too now. I guess we really are a three-Alpha pack now, in every sense. Ethan and Aiden will go through the Beta switch during the full moon, we don’t really need their strength any more, and we’ll be stronger as a pack without any possibility of in-fighting for dominance.”

“You need to come up with a name for yourselves, the Beacon Hills Pack isn’t really accurate anymore, and I doubt you’ll stay here after they move out for college. We can protect the town now, and we’ll be happy to provide support even after your pack moves. You’ll always have backup, remember that,” his father spoke, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“I love you, Mom, Dad.”

“You’ve grown into a good man, Derek, and we love you too,” the other man returned, smiling.

“I know it’s a lot to ask of you, but I will need help,” he started, looking at his mother.

“Of course, Derek, anything.”

“Now that Stiles is an Alpha, this town will be crawling with hunters. We need help taking care of them. If our packs work together, it won’t be an issue.”

“We were planning on it, I’ll be damned if I let some filthy trophy hunters take Helena and John’s son away from them, or your mate from you. The world needs someone like Stiles in it and if that means declaring war, that’s fine with me.”

            Her eyes were glowing and he had to agree with Stiles; moms were indeed terrifying.

“Thank you. I just really want to see everyone graduate, help them move into college…Make sure they all survive to live semi-normal lives,” he admitted, staring down at his hands and wondering if they really could do some good.

“Speaking of, I fully expect you to move in with the Pack when they go to college. If you can’t get a job as a Deputy there on the Sheriff’s word, we’ll handle your living expenses. Laura has expressed that she couldn’t handle your moping if you had to stay here without them, and I tend to agree with her.”

“Mom, that’s too much.”

Her face was stony, eyes red and commanding in a way that worked on him even if he was the Alpha of his own pack now, “No, it’s not. Accept it, just like Stiles had the grace to accept the money Peter gave him.”

“Yes, Ma’am. So…how is Peter doing?”

“Getting counseling, doting over his daughters. His wife is taking everything well, considering she’s human. She was understandably upset when he told her everything he’d done, but she forgave him, and they’re moving on. He wanted me to tell you he only went after Stiles to get you to do something about the tension between you, but I assume you already knew that or you would have killed him.”

“I knew he never wanted Stiles, even as far gone as he sometimes got after he recovered, he knew better. He just wanted me to claim Stiles before someone tried to take him from me, and I’m still not willing to do that in anything but name.”

“I can smell it on you, the mate bond, see it when I use my wolf eyes. Since I told Stiles it’s only gotten stronger, he has some place to focus his feelings for you other than the protection spell that created it in the first place. No werewolf could mistake that you were together, and Alpha-Alpha mates are vicious enough that no one would dare try to lay claim to him. Do you have anywhere to be in the next few hours? I’d like to teach you about being a mate, and your father can show you how best to be an Alpha’s anchor, he’s been one for thirty years.”

            He shook his head and they went into the study, shutting the door so the younger children knew not to bother them. Both the males sat on the floor, Talia taking the chair so she could stroke her son’s hair while they talked. It was something she used to do when he was upset and the fact that he still automatically relaxed when she did it made him realize how much he’d depended on his family, how much he honestly still did, even if now he had a much large family to take care of him.

“The most important part of being a mate is to communicate with your partner, you have to be able to listen and respond appropriately, sometimes under extreme duress. It’s all about give and take, sometimes Stiles might want something you don’t, and you need to tell him that with words. Try to walk away before you lash out, but if you can’t stop it, be as gentle as possible and bare your neck and beg forgiveness later. Maintain four feet of distance between both of you when you do fight, needing to take that extra step will prevent either of you from trying to strike each other in all but the worst situations.  
  
“Mate-abuse will be instinctually sensed and eradicated by the pack, one way or another. I’ve heard from your Pack that you used to be quite aggressive with Stiles, and while that might be okay with him, it won’t be okay with your Betas unless you both explain to them what is and isn’t acceptable. The amount of physical and sexual aggression you’re allowed toward each other has to be mutually agreed on by the Pack, since many of them have triggers. Stiles mentioned BDSM, and while you might not be into that yourself sexually, coming up with safewords, boundaries, and after-care procedures for the Pack to know and understand would be an ideal way for everyone to feel safe. For example, if you two fight, have a list of which packmembers should go to each party to calm them down, and who would be the mediators until you could talk face-to-face again. It might be awkward to address this with the adults in your pack present, but I think the Stilinskis would be happier for knowing that their son was in capable hands.”

He was blushing pretty furiously, but he managed to answer, “I’ll start that conversation as soon as everyone is in their right minds, three days from now.”

“As far as being an Alpha’s anchor, you might have a slightly better time of it, since you’re an Alpha yourself and can withstand more. There were a few times during Talia’s pregnancies where I had to have Deaton put me back together, not that either of us had any control over it. Stiles can’t get pregnant, at least. Based on what we know of other made-wolves, he’s going to be furious and terrified of himself. The best thing you can do is promise you’ll be there for him, that you’ll keep control him. On his first full moon you might have to get physical to achieve that control, but if you plan what to do beforehand he won’t be scared when you do. A berserk Alpha can’t feel pain at all, it’s important that everyone involved knows that so they’re not afraid to do what they need to. Scott won’t be much help, but Boyd and Erica are both incredibly strong for their age.”

“So I need to be his control when he can’t be, basically?”

“In the future you’ll need to appeal to his human side more, but the first one or two moons will be about simply preventing him from killing everyone."

            His father went into further detail about how to return an Alpha’s humanity to them, even if they’d taken wolf form and seemed unreachable, and he relaxed further into his mother’s touch. They wanted so badly for him to succeed at everything he did, he didn’t know what to do with it.

            He was woken by his alarm, his mother’s hands still in his hair. After apologizing for falling asleep, he let his parents hug him and left, headed toward the Sheriff’s house again. Parking the Camaro, he got out just as the first of the Pack were arriving, Ethan and Aiden dismounting their motorcycles and nodding at him. Lydia and Danny were next, with Stiles last as always. He had Erica and Boyd with him and the rest of the Pack waited until they were all out before surrounding him and making for the door. After nearly losing him, everyone was being cautious.

            Sweeping Stiles into his arms, he kissed the teen like he’d die if he didn’t, feeling him wrap his legs around the older Alpha’s strong torso. He was smiling, eyes the strange orange he supposed had replaced the gold now that he was a werewolf. It was beautiful, like the sun filtering through amber, and it really wasn’t that different from his normal eye color save for its radiance.

“Missed you too, loverwolf, but we have two day’s of homework to do before we all lose our shit, so gonna have to give this makeout a rain check.”

“Of course, I’ll help. I went to high school once too, and got my GED in New York,” he added at Stiles’s odd look. 

            They fell asleep buried in papers and textbooks, but largely caught up on everything they needed to be.

 

* * *

 

 

“Okay, so is everyone alright with the plan?”

“I’m sorry man, but I can’t hurt you,” Scott returned, looking at Stiles apologetically.

“That’s fine, you’ll have your hands full not killing everyone yourself. Everyone else? Derek, Boyd, Erica? I’m counting on you to take me out.”

“You got it, Batman,” Erica answered, while he and Boyd nodded solemnly.

“Everyone has their anchors, right? The humans have their stun guns and monkshood mace? Reminder: do _not_ taser Derek,” Stiles checked, sweat visibly pooling in his collarbones as the moonrise got closer.

“We’re all ready, Stiles. Even brought our running shoes,” Danny joked, trying to lighten the mood as the tension got oppressive.

“We’ll love you no matter what happens, Stiles,” Helena assured her son.

            Derek took his Alpha form, falling on all fours as a large black wolf and pressing Stiles into the forest floor as the sliver of the moon started to bathe the woods in silver. He writhed as he changed, fur blossoming over his body as his skeletal structure changed in bursts. Understandably smaller than Derek, he stilled briefly as soon as he was fully a wolf, fur reddish-brown with white underneath. Using the recovery time to his advantage, the largest Alpha bit down hard on the back of his neck, asking his lover for submission.

            Scott was handling himself decently, Allison and Isaac wrapped around him as he paced his energy out waiting for Stiles. The wolf below Derek was whining, panicking. They could communicate with the wolves like this, not so much the humans, but he could understand that Stiles was begging him to stop the racing of his heart. He growled, asking for submission again, and Stiles carefully bared his neck and rolled over to expose his belly to his mate when Derek let go of him. This was the easy part, it was when the moon was completely up that they would be in trouble if he couldn’t reign in his boyfriend by then.

            He licked the smaller wolf’s belly and scented his neck possessively, whining out that he would stop Stiles if it got bad. It surprised him how much larger he was than Stiles in this form, he could easily overpower him, it was more an issue of speed. Chances were the other Alpha would be so sick with the moon that he wouldn’t be able to control his gangly limbs anyway. Derek could do this.

“We need to start running,” he explained to the wolves, who translated for the humans in the pack.

            Nudging the smallest Alpha up, he took off, tumbling both him and Scott repeatedly as they tried to nip at his heels. The others kept up with them, giving the tussling Alphas room to play. Victoria cackled in the background to something Chris said to her about telling their family to fuck off. Ethan and Aiden’s eyes were back to gold and they were helping the older members of the pack find their way through the forest.

            Twenty minutes had Stiles whining and growling, darting in and out of the trees awkwardly as he tried to evade the pack. He was scared, vision probably tunneling into red smears as Derek’s had before he found a new anchor after losing his family.

 _“Stiles, it’s okay, I’m here, it’s Derek. I’ve got you,”_ he yipped, panting from the effort of keeping him boxed into a specific area.

            All he got in response was repeated whines of ‘I’m scared’, blurring together with the speed at which he communicated them. His eyes flashed and he suddenly turned on Scott and snarled, posture every kind of hostile he could manage. His best friend was confused but stood in front of some of the rest of the pack, refusing to back down. Wild-eyed, Stiles conjured a fireball that would have hit the smaller black wolf in the face had Derek not intercepted it with his flank, at which point it bounced off harmlessly.

            Stiles’s body nearly dragged the ground with how low he tried to make himself, noises a jumble of words that all carried the same degree of horror with what he’d just done. When his boyfriend approached him he bolted, right past Isaac and Erica before they could snatch him up. Derek lunged after him, powerful legs churning the earth below him as they put half a mile between them and the rest of the pack. His chest heaved with the effort, finally catching up when Stiles started to cry and tripped.

            Jumping toward him as he took human form again, they tumbled in a mass of fur and skin into the dead leaves littering the thick forest. Pinning him with his arms, he caught Stiles’s gaze.

“Turn back for me, Stiles. We can handle this together, I just need you to turn back. I love you, trust me.”

            The mass of fur writhed below him for long enough that he repeated himself, Stiles’s body stilling as he changed back slowly, bones crunching with the effort as the moon reflected in his eyes. They were glowing orange, either with the effort or the terror he felt, but he was human again, covered in dirt and looking like he hated himself.

“Derek, I’m so sorry, I should have had better control.”

“It’s completely fine, I wasn’t even hurt. How bad is it?”

“I think I might actually be dying.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes, god, please.”

            Wrapping his hands around the thin wrists carefully, he held the other down while he pressed their lips together gently. Whispering to let him take care of him against the smaller male’s mouth, he grew more insistent and took over completely. This was why Stiles had chosen him as an anchor instead of the Pack; he knew Derek needed someone to trust him with everything. The new Alpha had better control of himself than anyone expected, but he’d probably say it was all Derek’s doing that he didn’t slaughter half the town, and maybe Derek actually believed that, too. He could do this, he could use his body and his feelings for something good, for holding things together instead of breaking them, and no one could take his autonomy away like Scott had in his plan, or Peter had through Lydia when he forced his resurrection.

            Stiles glowed slightly with sudden calm, eyes fading from red to their normal whiskey color, glinting at him in the moonlight. Derek smiled and released him to brush some of the dirt off his face, letting his hands stroke the leaves out of his boyfriend’s hair. He was beautiful, vibrating with a sense of Pack and the power of the moon, and Derek never wanted to stop looking at him.

“As much as it pains me to say this, you two should probably put some pants on before the rest of the pack get here and Stiles’s Mom and Dad see you naked together,” Erica called before throwing them two bundles.

“I think…It’s tolerable, now. You’ll keep watching me, though? In case it gets bad again?”

“Won’t let you get loose, Stiles, I swear.”

            They pulled the sweatpants on and howled together to call the Pack to them. Their pitch matched and synced to form one more powerful sound and it was the most exhilarating feeling he’d ever experienced, more than his first kiss with Stiles, more than any full moon. The sound reverberated in his chest and it felt like his boyfriend had become one with him for one brief moment. Heartbeats converged on them and Scott was in his human form again, red eyes glowing but otherwise in control of himself.

“Are you okay, Son?” John asked, concern evident on his face as he carefully approached.

“Fine, Dad, under control again. How is everyone else doing, ready for another ten hours of this?” He questioned with a small smile, as if he already knew the answer.

“Maybe if there’s a little less running,” his father joked, putting a hand on his shoulder before pulling him into a hug.

“It’s good for your heart Dad,” Stiles chided.

            They spent the vast majority of the time playfighting while Stiles strengthened the protection spell on all of them with the full moon’s power and put his protection on the newer members of the Pack as well. Ethan and Aiden seemed to be acclimating well to their positions as Betas, though something about Aiden and Lydia seemed off, like there was stress there that wasn’t before. He’d try to talk with her about it later, she seemed calm and open with him, almost like she was making the effort to be his friend out of respect for the fact that she’d used his body without his consent to bring back the man who tried to take everything he had left from him.

“Hey, loverwolf, the moon’s about to set. Aren’t we gonna sing it out? I think that’s a thing Alphas do, isn’t it?” Stiles asked, motioning Scott over to him.

“Yeah, it is. Scott, are you ready?”

            He was thrilled Stiles knew about this, an old tradition from when werewolves would fight on the full moon; the Alpha would howl as the moon sunk below the horizon to signal victory, because generally speaking no human forces could hold back a pack of wolves juiced up on the moon.

            All three threw their heads back and howled, Scott off pitch but maybe one day they’d get comfortable enough with each other to match. He felt the tingling sensation he was so used to he barely registered it anymore disappearing with the last bit of the orb that his life largely revolved around and he let out a breath of relief. They’d done it, they’d made it through their first full moon as a full pack.

“Well, we didn’t kill anyone, I guess we should celebrate with breakfast with the rest of the Hales,” Scott said, looking to the other two for assent.

“Sounds good to me, I’m hungry as fuck,” Stiles agreed, Derek just nodding and calling his mom on her new cell.

            They met at the nearest McDonald’s, the only place that served food at five-thirty in the morning, and talked loud enough that they could all hear each other even if they were in a bunch of different booths and some of them were still human. Lydia sat with Derek and Stiles, of all things, but otherwise they broke off into their traditional triads and dyads, with the Hales all clustered in two booths.

“I want your permission to call Jackson. Scott, I know you can hear this, so give your input too,” Lydia added over her shoulder before making eye contact with the other two Alphas and holding it with Stiles.

“You mean, to come home and join the Pack?” Stiles clarified, and she gave him a look with pursed lips that answered for her.

“He’d have to submit to all three of us, only if you think he can do that. You’re worried that being an Omega is going to get him killed, right?”

“He texted me that he was attacked by a rogue Omega but fought him off. Had the wolf been a Beta, he wouldn’t have been so lucky. And Aiden and I…Aiden’s not as ready to break away from the life he lived in the Alpha Pack as Ethan is, he’s still rough around the edges. We’re breaking it off, amiably. He needs time to deal with his demons, I want someone who will give me everything. Jackson has in the past, and I want him back by my side. My elevated status in the Pack should give me the right to demand more backrubs from him, too. I’m your second, Stiles, and everyone knows it, just like Isaac is your second, Derek, and Allison is Scott’s second. And I know he can submit to you three, because I’ll threaten him if he doesn’t.”

“I think it would be good, to have everyone back together again, if he’s grown up a little. I don’t want to be part of the reason he dies,” Derek explained, carefully avoiding taking full blame but feeling the heat of Stiles’s glare anyway.

“I’m fine with it, Jackson’s Pack, or should be. Besides, I’m probably better than him at lacrosse now.”

“I kinda miss the arrogant asshole, almost. I don’t really believe that he’ll listen to us, but that’s not a good reason to stop him from coming home. He deserves to be safe, for as big as a prick as he can be, call him back to us,” Scott finished the vote.

“Good, I’ll set things in motion tonight. Thank you.”

            Derek hoped this too would be another step in the right direction, putting his hand on Stiles’s leg under the table and grounding himself to it. Their pack was so large already, but he couldn’t in good conscience let one of the wolves he’d turned continuing scraping by as an Omega. Besides, with three Alphas to keep control, it wouldn’t be so bad. The adults were still an issue that needed addressing, but that was for another day. Right now he needed to focus on preparing for his new job, and the appointment he had set up in two days with a therapist. He’d leave decorating the loft for the Pack to Isaac, who would be spending the most time there, with Erica to coach him on how to actually buy nice things he wanted. Erica and Boyd were repairing their relationships with their parents so they wouldn’t be staying over much. He made a mental note to tell Isaac to buy enough mattresses to make a pack nest for bad nights.

“In case no one has told you this yet, you two are good together. I’m glad to have you as my Alphas, Scott too.”

            A smile split Stiles’s face and Derek let his lips quirk as well, Lydia knew exactly what people wanted and needed and when to give which to them. She wasn’t lying either.

“Thank you, Lydia,” he started, taking a breath and another step toward resolving his issues, “I forgive you. For what happened with Peter, you weren’t in control. I forgive you too, Scott, for using me against Gerard without my consent.”

            Scott turned to look at him with a guilty look matching Lydia’s, both realizing they’d never apologized for what they’d done to him. It was something everyone in the Pack needed to work on, apologizing for doing bad things because of various reasons.

“New Pack rule: everyone apologizes when they hurt someone else, even if it’s not entirely their fault,” Stiles hissed.

“Seconded,” Derek intoned, glancing around at all the Betas.

“Motion carries,” Scott muttered.

            None of them were perfect, but they were all getting better, Derek had to admit. He was learning to take things for himself, use his words and admit that he had issues. Stiles was more of a work in progress, but Scott was working on not taking things for granted anymore, or so he hoped. It was nice, watching his Pack grow and learn, even if it hurt like hell half the time. He realized this was probably what parenting felt like. 

            They collapsed in a mass of bodies at the loft, the adults heading home or to their jobs. Stiles wrapped himself around Derek’s back like he was pretending to be a blanket and the older man couldn’t even bring himself to pretend to be put out. He liked it when Stiles touched him voluntarily, even if it was weird for him to be the big spoon. At least this way, someone had his back, literally, and it helped him slip into sleep that much quicker.

 

* * *

 

 

“I know it’s probably odd, but packmembers are supposed to work together with their Alphas, and I can’t really expect you to follow the orders of kids, but at the least we need to know what you’re doing and be able to stop you if we don’t think it’s the right course of action. Werewolf hierarchy doesn’t account for age, and as much as I respect that you’re all older than us, we have a little more experience than most of you with the supernatural,” Derek finished, hoping he did a decent job of explaining things to the parents of the Pack.

            They were having an all-pack meeting before his first shift as deputy, three weeks before Jackson was moving back to Beacon Hills. Laura had insisted that he submit his diploma from the academy he’d gone to at her pressuring in New York, refusing to let the populace think he got the job on the Sheriff’s word alone. He was hoping to avoid explaining why he’d had a perfectly good certification to work for the police department for three years and hadn’t, or telling anyone that his lifelong dream had been to be some sort of criminal justice enforcer. Derek only dressed like a delinquent because that had kept him from getting into fights in New York, which he would have won at the cost of possibly having to kill the people he got into it with just to protect his secret. After he came back, it was to keep people away from him, not that that had worked at all. He was glad it hadn’t.

“If it keeps us alive, I guess I can’t argue with that,” the Sheriff admitted, glancing at Melissa while Helena nodded.

“It’s going to be weird listening to my son, but he’s done his best to keep me safe before, and I’m totally out of my element with all this werewolf and druid nonsense, so I guess that’s fine. I won’t think it’s incompetence if you come to me for advice, either, good leaders know when to ask for help.”

            Last was the Argents, who seemed thoughtful. He didn’t expect to hear from Chris, he didn’t really get a say so long as his wife and daughter were along according to their tradition.

“While I don’t like the idea of following your orders,” Victoria paused, tapping her red nails on the table, “It’s biologically imperative that I do, now, and my daughter has put her total faith in your band. She’s a very sensible girl, so she must have seen something in you during all your battles the past year. I suppose we can start running things by you more often. On one condition.”

He raised his eyebrows, silently imploring her to continue.

“She explained that she’s in the beginnings of a relationship with Scott and that Isaac boy. They may all be more mature than most of their peers, but they’re still young. I need you to tell me if they’re getting in over their head so we can all sit together as a Pack and discuss how to fix it before Allison gets hurt. I haven’t been the most…supportive of her romantic decisions in the past, and while I’m trying to be better for her now, I don’t know that she’ll come to me on her own anymore.”

“While they all have to have a chance to make mistakes, I get that there’s a lot at stake with this. I’ll try to monitor them as best I can through Stiles and Lydia, I think Isaac will come to me or Melissa if he has concerns,” he added with a glance at the black-haired woman, who nodded at him.

“Good. What’s your explanation for all these meetings, and how much time teenagers spend in your apartment?”

“Neighborhood watch after all those murders last year, just a bunch of concerned citizens trying to keep an eye on the populace, with a few hunters to deal with the animal attacks.”

“Good, very good. Speaking of hunters, there’s whispers on the horizon about a Little Red with powerful magic. Typically Little Reds are disposed of with extreme haste, before their first full moon, which is why so few werewolves know about the others. The last one was ten years ago, he didn’t make it forty-eight hours. We’ve told them the rumors aren’t true, that we could have taken care of any Little Reds or Alpha Mages immediately if they were in our territory, but there will be extremists on their way to be sure within the month,” Chris said, trailing off while waiting for Derek to form a plan of action, or ask for one if he couldn’t.

“We need to talk with everyone about it, but I think the best tentative plan is to kill them and say they tried to kill your daughter for dating werewolves and you dealt with them accordingly. Is that enough to stop further trespass?”

“It should be. Until everyone goes off to college, but it will buy us time.”

“The Hale Pack is behind us completely, it shouldn’t be a problem to get rid of them. I’ll talk it over with the rest during the Pack Meeting tomorrow. We’ll burn their remains, give them back the ashes, easiest way to avoid them determining cause of death."

“Your family won’t come under fire, right?”

“Family is everything to hunters, if they hear that those bastards tried to hurt our daughter they won’t have an ounce of sympathy for the fallen, even if she was dating werewolves. You don’t touch another hunter’s family regardless of what you think about their lifestyle choices unless you want them to rain hell and arrows down on your head.”

            He grimaced, finding her description and the force with which she said it a bit frightening, then realized he was starting to pick mannerisms up from Stiles. Was that a bad thing? It was bound to happen, and to get worse as they spent more time together, but maybe he didn’t mind. It was almost like taking a bit of Stiles with him wherever he was.

“Thank you for coming to the meeting, but we’ve got work in twenty. Be on the lookout, call me or Stiles if anything happens.”

“Not Scott?” Melissa questioned, raising a brow.

“We’ve had very bad luck with Scott answering his phone for emergencies,” he explained simply, remembering the night in the pool when he first realized that Stiles was made of something special.

            This seemed to appease her curiosity, and he and the Sheriff got into the cruiser as everyone pulled away. They’d be driving their own cars mostly, but for the first week they would be on together as John showed him the ropes outside of a classroom and training. Chances were he’d be replacing the man’s current partner if he didn’t mesh well with any of the new recruits. Most of the station were green, so at least he wouldn’t stand out as inexperienced, but he still couldn’t think of it as a positive when the reason was because a teenager had used a giant lizard monster to slaughter half the original officers.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did your first meeting with the therapist go? If you don’t want me to bring it up just say so, but I’m always willing to listen.”

“No, it’s fine, thank you for asking. We just sort of got acquainted, set goals for where I wanted to get, and she told me to think about how I thought I could get there for our next meeting. I’ll have appointments three times a week for a while so I’ll need to take long lunches if I have day shifts for that.”

“Whatever you need, son, she’s written you a laundry list of excuses I can pull out at any time if people start shit. Just do your job well when you can be with us and no one will think twice about you needing more time off than the rest of us. I’ve got your back.”

            They pulled up at the station but neither made to get out yet.

“Thank you, John. It really means a lot to me, that you’d do all this for me,” he thought about his therapy before taking another breath, “You’ve been like a second father to me.”

            John smiles at him warmly and pulls him into a one-armed hug over the console that’s way more comforting than it is awkward, and they get out and head in. Once introductions are over, they tour the station as if Derek hasn’t been in most of the areas for reasons varying in legality before. Rubbing at his clean-shaven face, he wondered if he could expect Stiles to bring their dinners to them, then shook his head. Of course he would, Stiles wouldn’t miss his first day if the apocalypse was knocking at the station’s door, he’d just shove it aside and tell it to fucking wait until his boyfriend was fed.

            Making a mental note to talk to his therapist about Stiles tomorrow, he started in on some basic paperwork that was getting piled up. It wasn’t exciting, but he could do busywork and his life had more than anyone’s fair share of excitement and pain so he didn’t really mind that he wasn’t being shot at. Stiles brought lunch at nine and hung around with them to eat and steal a kiss when no one was looking before darting back out and toward his home. Someone was brought in around midnight for drunk driving but other than that nothing happened in his twelve hour shift. Isaac convinced him to crash at the Stilinski household because Scott and Allison had come over. He didn’t want to know any of the details and left it at that. Red eyes flashed at him in mild irritation when he attempted to sleep on the floor, forcing him to relocate himself to the bed before Stiles got up and dragged him there.

“I’m scared the hunters will come for me. I don’t want to be hunted. I want to be a totally normal teenager with a genius-level IQ who takes too much medication for his hyperactivity and is constantly shown up by a girl he thought he would eventually marry for ten years and who loves his werewolf boyfriend very much,” the words spill out of his mouth suddenly as he curls into Derek like he wants to be the little spoon tonight, wants to be protected.

“I can’t guarantee they won’t come, but I can promise you that we’ll protect you, even if for a few minutes we might not be there to tear their throats out. You…don’t want to kill them, do you?”

“It still doesn’t seem real that I killed Kali and Ennis. I saw their bodies, I know it was me, but it doesn’t feel like it was, you know? Like I can blame it on someone else and say no, I’ve never killed anyone. But I did. I burned two people to death, and even if they were monsters, I can’t really make sense of that that in my head. Me, a killer. Maybe I’ll get over that, maybe I’ll go to therapy or something, but for right now I’m doing fine by just pushing it off as something I had no real part in. I don’t think I could deal with killing any more people right now, at least not to save my own life. For the Pack I’d just like, act on instinct and tear those motherfuckers new ones, but…Yeah.”

“I think I understand. If they corner you just try to fend them off, we’ll finish them for you.”

            He didn’t have any such reservations, not after living kill-or-be-killed for so long. If the Pack got sent into the kind of frenzy that would erupt from a critically wounded Alpha he doubted very much that any of them would even stop to think at what they were doing as they tore the life out of anyone who didn’t surrender immediately. Sometimes the only way to deal with people like glory hunters was to recognize that evil existed in the hearts of man and monster alike and to treat them as one in the same.

“I don’t like the idea that I’m going to make everyone else fight my battle for me, kill for me.”

“Get used to it, that’s what pack means. You’ve already said you’d do the same for us.”

            He nestled his head under Derek’s chin and went silent. After ten minutes without a response, the older man would have guessed he was asleep if he didn’t know better 

He muttered something that was definitely along the lines of ‘I love you’, dropping off almost as soon as Derek rumbled it back as if his body was simply waiting for permission to pass out. Moving his senses outward, he could hear that the Sheriff was already asleep, and there didn’t seem to be anything larger than a domestic animal for a good half mile radius. Content that he would wake up if that changed, he drifted off.

 

* * *

 

 

“So what do you think, Derek? What’s up for discussion today, and what are we going to wait on?”

He gathered his thoughts for a second, liking the way his therapist was informal with him. She was a shifter as well, and could use healing magic, though she refused to tell him what she shifted into. Stiles guessed unicorn and refused to accept that no one had seen a unicorn for centuries, simply saying that was probably because they had learned to take human form. Derek had to admit it kind of made sense, they were such a powerful species to go extinct so easily.

“I wanted to talk about my Pack, and how I should try to convince myself that I deserve them, because I’ve really fucked up being an Alpha in the past and they’d still put their lives on the line for me.”

“Alright, describe each member of your pack, and how you can show them that you care about them.”

“I think I need to do a little more than just care about them to earn what they give me.”

She looked at him like he was hopelessly, preciously slow, “They’re your family, Derek, your chosen family but a family nonetheless. That’s all they want.”

He nodded blankly and decided to save Stiles for last, “Scott’s a good man, but sometimes he makes bad decisions or lets his emotions cloud his judgment. One day he’ll be so much more capable than he is, and I have high hopes for him succeeding in the future where he’s failed before. I guess he reminds me of myself.”

“Does he look up to you?”

“God I hope not.”

“I don’t understand your reticence to be a role model, but we’ll work on it. So how are you going to show Scott that you care?”

“Guide him, I guess. Help him manage his studies and his duties as an Alpha. Learn alongside him.”

“Very good, I can tell you’ve thought about it before.”

He wanted to ask her how any of that would be enough, but he realized that was more of a question for each individual pack member than anything. Scott would tell him what was enough, if he got up the balls to just ask instead of letting the fear that everyone would up and leave him again stop him. The tingling sense of comfort he got around Dr. Aurelia returned as she silently urged him on, tension seeping out of him. It was magic, he knew it was, but he wasn’t afraid of it. Speaking wasn’t going to kill anyone, and this was about being a better Alpha. After coming so close to losing everything, he could handle using his words, being stoic had brought him nothing but pain.

“Allison is brave, a good tactician, even if she’s still growing. She’s got a lot of demons left to deal with, I think, but she’s improved since she got her mother back and joined the Pack. Isaac and Scott being loyal to her makes her less flighty, less likely to go on a powertrip and turn into a psychopath again. I guess the best thing I can do for her is help her manage those two and maintain some sort of normalcy in her life, sort of be her calm in the storm. Isaac is incredibly kind once you get past his sarcasm and he doesn’t give up on people even if they hurt him, he’ll forgive literally anything to the point where it’s almost a failing. He wants so badly for people to like him, that’s all he’s ever wanted is a good family. I think he looks up to me as a big brother, that’s what I can do for him, take care of him.

“Boyd still blames himself for his missing sister and doesn’t talk much because he doesn’t think he deserves friends other than Erica, who forced herself into his life tooth and nail and refuses to leave again. He just needs to know we aren’t going to disappear, he needs stability. Erica’s fierce, she won’t just lie down or give up, she died fighting and she’d do it again. She thinks her new health is a gift, more than any of the others, and she’s determined to use it to get everything she wants or need and protect the people she loves. I think I already gave her everything I can…Maybe I can teach her how to fight better, how to use her body as a weapon in other ways with a little more finesse than she does. Lydia is a genius, she’d make a better Alpha than any of us, but she doesn’t want that. She has more courage than I think anyone knows what to do with, and she wants to support people, she’s the kind of leader that doesn’t order people around, instead pushes them forward to become all that they have the ability to be. I can give her a lot of pet projects to work on, the Pack is a challenge to her and she loves it. I don’t know much about Danny, Ethan, or Aiden yet, but I assume they expect competence from me. Jackson has probably changed, I hope for the better. The adults just want me to keep their kids safe.”

“And what about your boyfriend, Stiles?”

He smiled, “When I first met Stiles, I thought, who the fuck is this goddamn spastic idiot and why won’t he just leave well enough alone? I think that was my opinion of him for a while, and then he spent two hours treading water to keep me from drowning, which is objectively difficult as it is, much more impressive when you consider we were being circled by a kanima. He could have just run and left me to die, we hated each other, but he stayed. I think that’s when I realized that Stiles was something special, something rarer than any mythical creature I’ve ever heard of. He might be awkward now, he’ll probably never be outright graceful, but he’s awe-inspiring. Stiles can roll with the punches unlike anyone I’ve ever seen, he doesn’t buckle he just gets back up and wins. He’s got this strength that no amount of magic or genetics can give a person. And all he wants from me is my love. He holds the power to do and take anything he wants right in the palm of his hand, and all he asks of the world is me, as broken as I am.”

“To you, your Pack is a gift, something you didn’t have the words to ask for or feel as though you have the right to call yours. What you don’t understand is that each of them feels the same way about you. The Pack is the best thing that ever happened to you, and you are the best thing to ever happen to them, mistakes and all.”

“I ruined the lives of these kids.”

“Maybe you took their old lives away, but you gave them something new, something they can mold themselves. Isaac had an abusive father, you gave him the ability to heal from physical wounds and a family to heal his psychological wounds. Erica was held back by her epilepsy, you cured her and she blossomed. Boyd is haunted by the loss of his sister, but you gave him an entire family to look out for and succeed at protecting this time around. Everyone else just fell into place with you, you had nothing to do with what happened to them.”

            He looked down at his hands, coming to terms with the idea even if he wasn’t completely ready to accept that anything he’d done had actually helped anyone but himself. Tracing the swirls on the pads of his fingers with his eyes, he wondered at them, thought about how he could guide the teenagers in their molding of themselves with them. It was past time he learned how to touch things without being afraid to ruin them. Maybe he’d ask the Pack for help.

“Would you like the end the session a few minutes early?”

“Yes, thank you,” Derek answered, content with where they’d gotten, even if it wasn’t quite anywhere.

            He was no more fixed when he left than when he came in, but he had something to think about during his shift, at least. The drive was short and nothing tried to kill him, for once. Adjusting his uniform before walking into the station, he settled in with some paperwork from the day shift. The Sheriff sat down with him not long after he arrived and he shot John a small smile.

“So, how did the meeting go?”

“It gave me a lot to think about. Good,” he added, realizing that being cryptic wasn’t going to help anyone.

“That’s good, then. Do you think-” John cut himself off as their radios crackled to life.

They both focused on it, breath held as they heard an out-of-breath officer say ‘possible 207 or 187’. A blue jeep had been found with bullet holes in the cab abandoned by the side of the road, engine still hot, plates belonging to the Sheriff’s son. A phone and backpack were still in the vehicle, no sign of the driver. They were on the road by the time the location was read, Derek sending an emergency mass text to call everyone in the Pack who could fight to the edge of the preserve, then called his mother.

“Mom, they’ve attacked Stiles. I don’t know what condition he’s in or where, but the cops found his vehicle at the west end of the preserve.”

“We’ll be there in five. Don’t panic, Derek, even with his protection spell you’d know if he was dead.”

            He felt his pulse drop at her reassurance and he thanked her before hanging up, jumping out of the car and towards the woods before it had come to a complete stop, hoping the Sheriff would deal with the officers at the scene and keep them from approaching.

“Stiles!” Derek roared at the top of his lungs, trying to catch his scent on the wind.

            Isaac came tumbling through the brush, followed closely by Scott and Erica. They said Boyd and the twins weren’t far behind, and he got a text saying the Argents were approaching from the opposite end and would be making their way toward them through the forest and looking for traps as they went. Isaac approached him cautiously and touched his shoulder, the contact grounding him until he could let the red fade out of his vision. Stiles would be okay, counting the Hales there were twenty of them, more than enough to find him in an hour in an area ten times the size of the preserve. Stiles was strong too, stronger than the hunters would be expecting, and he could absolutely defend himself against them until he could be rescued if they somehow prevented him from attacking outright.

“Thank you, Isaac.”

            The others arrived within the minute and they fanned out, meeting the rest of the Hales a quarter mile in. His extended family radiated fury in the worst way and he knew why; to a wolf, literally the worst thing anyone could do was hurt, kidnap, or kill another wolf’s mate. Their primal blood was indignant on his behalf, ready to rend everything from skin to concrete to get Stiles back for him. Bullets and knives wouldn’t be nearly enough to stop them, and only lines of ash made by a highly competent Spark would stand a chance.

            In the distance he could hear the Argent’s SUV stopping at the edge of the woods, all three of them running out. The fact that they were Pack made them much easier to focus on, though whatever the hunters had done or were doing to Stiles cut him off from them. A ward, maybe. Still, he strained his senses to catch the telltale pitter-patter of his boyfriend’s heart.

            The howl of an Alpha, _his_ Alpha, cut through the air and they charged as one unit toward the sound. In an instant his uniform was off and he changed, everything forgotten. His four paws slammed the ground below him as he and his mother matched pace, Scott not far behind. The power of the Pack flooded into his muscles and he pushed himself further as they willed him on, tears streaming from his eyes at the speed as he burst into a clearing full of guns with people attached to them. Roaring, he pulled their attention away from the smaller wolf in a warded circle of ash. Eyes tunneling with bloodlust, he could see the blood matting Stiles’s side, breaths somewhat labored as he picked his head up to look at the new arrivals.

“ _Killthemkillthemkillthemnomercy_ ,” he snarled to everyone, as if they needed him to tell them how to deal with hunters.

            He jumped into the fray, ignoring the spray of bullets because they couldn’t touch him. Even bullets enchanted to pierce through his shield slowed down and bounced off his thick hide and fur harmlessly as he tore the throat out of a girl who was probably no more than nineteen because he could smell that she had fired her gun at his mate. He felt nothing, no regret, only the need to continue killing everyone in sight who wasn’t on his side. They’d come here with only one purpose: to take an innocent life. Scum like them weren’t worthy of being torn apart by the teeth of an Alpha, but he’d maul them anyway.

            His family were hurt, he could tell, but it only helped propel him further into madness. Images came in flashes, Scott snapping a man’s neck, Boyd shattering a woman’s spine over his knee, Erica moving like a blur and cutting the throat of anyone she passed by. The twins barreled through hunters in their combined form like a freight train, bodies flying everywhere, and Isaac was bodily protecting Peter and Stiles as his uncle tried to rid the bloodied Alpha of the bullets and wolfsbane so he could heal. Lydia was here and he didn’t understand why, but at least she’d been able to break the line. A hunter shot Allison out of a tree as she fired an arrow and Scott caught her as she fell screaming. It was a shoulder shot, she would live, but that didn’t stop Chris from filling the shooter full of bullets as Victoria stormed into the fray with claws out.

“Shoot to kill, the humans are the ones who are monsters here,” he heard the Sheriff’s voice explain to his deputies and strangely enough, the two FBI agents that he had assumed had left by now.

“We know,” one of them answered.

            Bloody and victorious as the last man fell, he threw his head back and howled before trotting over to a now-bipedal Stiles and nosing everyone away until he could wrap his massive form around his tiny mate. His heartbeat was strong as the wolfsbane receded and his body healed itself, amber eyes flashing as he opened them.

“Loverwolf, my hero,” he mumbled, scratching under Derek’s chin before letting his arm flop back down.

“Derek, can you change back for us? Stiles is safe now, everyone’s being tended to. You did so well, little wolf,” Talia praised him as she approached, covered in the male agent’s long coat.

            She held out his uniform’s pants for him and he was suddenly reminded that Stiles was naked too and refused to shift until someone offered up pants or a coat long enough to prevent the rest of the world from seeing his mate without his clothes on. He knew he was more possessive as a wolf, but he didn’t think this was really asking a lot, especially considering Stiles was a minor.

            Boyd took one for the team, pulling off his overly-long sleeping shirt so he was standing in nothing but his boxers and daring anyone to say shit about it with his expression as he tossed it to Stiles. Once he was certain no one was going to leer at his boyfriend, he unwound himself and changed back, pulling his pants on and waiting for an explanation from someone as to why there were two deputies and two FBI agents here that were not panicking over the existence of werewolves. Stiles went to Allison’s side and healed her shoulder like new, winning him a look of pure adoration from Victoria before her face snapped back into the severe one she normally carried.

“Care to explain, Agent Hamel?” He asked, striding up to them in a way he hoped was commanding without being threatening, though maybe being covered in blood made that impossible.

“If you honestly think the government doesn’t know about the supernatural…Well, I guess you’d be pretty safe assuming that based on their ignorance in pretty much everything else, but you’d be wrong in this instance. We’re from the special division that deals with unusual murders, and these two deputies here are plants from lower in the department. The government’s stance on werewolves is much the same as the Argents’, though we actually stick to it. As far as we can tell all the homicides you’ve committed were in self-defense. We don’t discriminate, there are plenty of wolves in our ranks. These hunters attacked a minor that had committed no crime according to werewolf culture and self-defense laws and acted with intent to kill your packs, therefore we will be recording this not as a massacre but a threat neutralized. We’ve been watching this particular band for a while, they were suspected of hunting other mythical creatures for their anatomy to sell on the black market.”

“And the bodies?”

“We have special disposal units. They’ll be taken care of.”

            He nodded, cracking his neck to relieve some of the tension there.

“Hey so do you take applications for that sort of thing?” Stiles asked, bounding up and putting his hand on Derek’s lower back comfortingly.

“More of a list of potentials, really. And yes, before you ask, you’re both on it. We’ve been very impressed with your work here in Beacon Hills, and how you’ve managed to do it without letting anyone but the essentials know what’s really going on,” the male agent said, demeanor warmer now that they weren’t suspects for committing human sacrifice.

“Thanks! We’re pretty kick-ass now that we’re all working together,” Stiles returned brightly.

“Mr. Hale, I’d like to speak with you privately during your next shift at the station. I have a feeling you’ll be ending this one earlier than scheduled so you can wash the entrails off yourself,” he said, eyes narrowing.

“I’ll be there,” he muttered, watching as his family tended their wounds with burnt wolfsbane.

            They eventually found themselves back at the loft in the nest he and Isaac had painstakingly made for just such an occasion, John refusing the let Derek come back to work until tomorrow. He needed to be there to take care of Stiles since unfortunately the Sheriff didn’t have a hundred different work excuses pre-signed and undated, at least that’s what the man had said. He knew everyone was just worried about how badly he might react to Stiles having been attacked, and as much as he wanted to throw back in their face that he was completely fine, he wasn’t and it would be stupid to try and pretend.

            He had nothing to prove anymore.

“Why were you even out there, dude?” Scott asks from his position at Stiles’s feet, the only place where Erica and Derek are not monopolizing the freckled teen.

“I heard a guy screaming, I thought someone was being attacked by something. Got shot at, ran toward this guy covered in blood right into the ward, they’d covered it with leaves so I didn’t sense it until I was on it, and then the guy sealed the ring and I was fucked. My protection spell held up for a while, but then they brought out the piercing bullets and I shifted to make a smaller target. Took everything just to howl for you guys through the ward. Not a very good one, but you know. Bullet wounds don’t really bring out the best in anyone. Also are we ever gonna talk about how fucking big Derek is as a wolf because there’s this thing called conservation of mass.”

“My total mass doesn’t change, Stiles, you’re just not used to wolves that are over two-hundred pounds.”

“Thank god I’m not, you mean, that would be horrifying.”

“You think my wolf form is horrifying?” He drawled, just being an ass for the sake of it.

“Derek you know damn well what I meant. Your wolf form is just like your human form, stunning.”

“You two are disgusting,” Lydia quipped without much venom.

“Says the person who kept a key her ex gave her even after he broke up with her, yeah, go on, cast that first stone.”

“You’re one to talk, Stiles, you pined after me for ten years.”

“I’m just saying that you have no room to talk and actually no one in this room does, okay, we’re all pathetic sappy losers and it’s beautiful because we’re one big happy family.”

“My teeth are literally rotting out of my head,” Erica whined.

“Then keep your mouth closed,” Allison replies with a laugh as she’s swatted.

“Think that was the last of them?” Stiles asks quietly, voice strained.

            The overwhelming silence was a louder negative than anyone could have voiced, and the brown-eyed teen sighed. Derek stroked his side in a way he hoped was comforting. This wasn’t even the beginning to their run-ins with hunters, but they’d manage. He’d make sure Stiles didn’t go anywhere alone from now one, really understood how important that was.

“Maybe I should go to a different college as everyone else, I don’t want to be responsible for all of you guys getting kicked out or failing because we’re being attacked.”

“Maybe you should never say something that fucking stupid again,” Boyd piped up aggressively.

“Seriously, Stiles, if we failed or dropped out it would be because you went to a different college and got your skinny ass killed and we can’t function without you,” Scott agreed vehemently.

“Yeah, you guys really can’t do shit without me, can you?”

“Are you only just now realizing that you singlehandedly united two packs?” Isaac quested, lifting his head to squint at Stiles.

“I’m pretty sure I used both hands,” the smallest Alpha joked salaciously.

“Thank you for that fantasy Stiles, I think this is my new favorite,” Erica mused, voice heavy and heart not missing a beat.

“That was a joke, a _joke,_ I do not want to touch Scott’s dick because it belongs to Allison.”

“Wait does that mean you’d touch my dick otherwise?”  
  
“Maybe if I didn’t have a boyfriend, I mean, what are friends for, right? But I do. Have a boyfriend. And so do you, and a girlfriend, so stop talking about me touching your dick, dude.”

“You started it,” Scott replied petulantly.

“As fun as this conversation has been, maybe we should all try to get some sleep?” Lydia suggested, which the twins immediately seconded, apparently having some test in the morning they didn’t study for.

            He stayed up and listened to them all sleep protectively, knowing he could let his guard down and still sense a hunter from miles off, but not wanting to let this moment slip past. By the time he’d decided about where Jackson would probably fit in as far as their mosaic of body parts, the sun was rising and the teens grumbling about how unfair everything was.

            Lydia was driving Stiles and was incredibly patient while Derek kissed the sense out of him, all morning breath, residual fear, love, and lust. The strawberry blonde finally dragged him away stumbling and babbling about how much he wanted to marry Derek’s tongue without even having given it a proper test drive and the green-eyed werewolf knew he was blushing but smiled anyway.

            Settling down in the nest left behind by his Pack, he actually got some sleep before his next shift, surrounded by their comforting scents. When he woke up, he was in exactly the same place and nothing terrible had happened. It was a miracle. Getting dressed, he drove to the station and entered the working office of the agents as soon as he was on the clock.

“You needed to see me?”

“Deputy Hale, how is your Pack?”

“Recovering well. Waiting on our last original member to rejoin us in the States, Jackson Whittemore, an Omega soon to return as my Beta. If you could, make sure none of your department try to take him out, I’m sure you have policies on Omegas reentering the country.”

“We’ll make a note of it. More to the point, we assume you’re planning on following your Pack to whatever college they end up at, correct?” Agent Hamel queried, continuing at his nod, “It’s the department’s opinion that a werewolf of your moral character would make an excellent plant Deputy at other police stations, or even as university security. College towns tend to have an issue with the supernatural because college students are at the correct age for many of them to manifest abilities they didn’t have before and lack the training to control themselves. You would be compensated, and it would improve both your and Stiles’s chances of being tapped to become full-blown agents like us. It would also help you better protect your Pack from the law if anything were to happen that would incriminate them.”

“It’s a generous offer, but I’d rather discuss it with my Pack before making a decision, if that’s acceptable.”

“Of course, think it over for a few days and get back with us. Our training of the newest plants will be finished in a week and we’ll leave, so sometime before then would be ideal.”

“Was there anything else?”

“No, thank you. Be careful, there will always be more hunters.”

“I know,” he muttered lowly, walking back out and sitting down at his desk to get some of the Sheriff’s paperwork done for him.

            It was the least he could do after leaving early yesterday.

            Stiles calls him near his lunch to tell him that the Pack has barricaded him inside and refuse to let him back outside to bring Derek a lunch, so instead he’s sent Allison to complete the task. Insisting that he isn’t that hungry gives him exactly the amount of results he expected, which is jack shit, and he resigns himself to it. Stiles waxes a bit about how killing a hunter’s kid is the equivalent of putting a hit out on yourself, trails off, and finally ends the conversation by telling Derek that he loves him, which the other werewolf returns. It’s domestic. Probably pathetic. He adores it like he thought he never would anything again.

            Allison arrives precisely at his lunch hour and he asks immediately how her shoulder is doing before digging into his burger and fries because apparently Stiles will actually let _him_ have greasy food. Something about werewolves not having heart problems.

“Oh, it’s fine, not even stiff after Stiles healed it,” she answered with a casual smile as she made to leave.

 

“Allison, what can I do for you to show you that I care about you?” He said, blinking when he realized that had actually come out.

She stopped and turned back to him, making an odd face and a few abortive noises before her face settled into an expression he didn’t recognize and she plunked down into the seat across from him, “Like as a member of the group?”

            He nodded, surprised she even considered answering him. She seemed to think about it for a moment before her dark eyes flit back to him. Eyes that were nothing like Kate Argent’s.

“Well…I know the Pack thing doesn’t apply as much to humans, so sometimes I worry that this thing with Isaac and Scott will backfire and we’ll have a fight and no one will hear my side of the story. So, I guess it would really show you cared about me if you listened to me instead of just automatically taking their side. Not that anyone’s actually right in a fight, but…”

“You just don’t want to be ganged up on,” he huffed, accidentally putting more knowing into the statement than he intended to, and she caught it.

“You’ve been there, you know how bad that feels.”

“I do. If something happens, you know I don’t lock the loft, and you know my cell, I’ll pick you up if you want me to. You’re Pack, Allison.”

            It physically hurts, reaching out to someone like this after so long, extending a hand to someone with the last name Argent and hoping like hell he doesn’t end up losing everything he loves again. The pain burns in his chest, but he regulates his breathing, because he won’t have nice things to lose if he doesn’t fight for them. He wants nice things, for Stiles, for the Pack, since he isn’t quite ready to want them for himself yet.

“I know this is hard for you, after what Kate did to you, after what I did to your Pack. I’m sorry for attacking all of you, and I know I can never apologize enough for what she did, but I’m sorry for that too. And…I forgive you, for accidentally biting my mother. She told me, a few days ago. I had been tolerating you because I couldn’t really blame you for her suicide, she held the knife, after all, and you didn’t blame my father for what Kate did so I hardly had grounds for my hatred. Now that I know you saved Scott’s life and that none of it would have happened if she hadn’t tried to kill you too, I understand. It wasn’t your fault. Thank you, for keeping it to yourself all this time, but you shouldn’t take the fall for people like that anymore.”

“As one of your Alphas, I might have to.”

She slammed her fist on the table, eyes burning, “No, not anymore, not ever. We’re a Pack now, we don’t just sacrifice one of our own on the altar of someone’s misplaced hatred.”

            He was taken aback, eyes wide and mouth partially open and he knew he must look like a moron.

“We’re a family and we protect our own, and that will always include you,” she expounded before standing and offering him a smile, “You should finish your lunch so Stiles doesn’t yell at me for letting you go hungry. And, thank you.”

“For what?”

“Caring,” she answered with a shrug before striding out. 

            He eats his food slowly, contemplating his strange new family and how much they seem to love him, even against their will. Without ever having been in a functioning pack that wasn’t his literal flesh and blood, he had no idea that the pack bond was this strong, even for the humans. Derek smiles slightly as he finishes the rest of his shift, though he assumes no one but John notices.

 

* * *

 

 

            He agreed to be a plant for the department, knowing it’d be an easy way to get a guaranteed transfer and wanting so badly to help Stiles achieve his dream of becoming an agent for them. Nothing particularly exciting happened following the hunters, as if they were getting a break for once in their short lives and they go into Jackson’s arrival back home with stable grades and light hearts. They all crowded in to pick him up at the airport, something about his parents not believing he really had a support system here and wanting to be sure before they signed all the paperwork to get him officially moved back. Jackson had also begged off the restraining order, saying that were simply trying to get him to be less stressed out.

            The obnoxious teen he’d be fine with watching go returned more tan, with darker circles under his eyes, and immediately swept Lydia into his arms like a man returning from a decade-long war. He looked broken as he begged her forgiveness for everything, and she bit her lip and said they’d discuss it later. Jackson still needed to offer his submission to the Pack and possibly come back to the loft and join in on a puppy pile with them if his parents would allow it.

“Jackson, welcome back,” Stiles offered as he approached the three Alphas at the head of the Pack.

“Stilin-Stiles, you look…Good,” he finished, genuinely surprised as the realization that Stiles had gotten hot over the summer hit him.

Derek didn’t realize the growling was coming from him until frightened blue eyes flashed at him and Jackson bared his neck. Glancing around to ensure there wasn’t anyone who might notice their strange behavior, he swiped a hand along the back of the teen’s neck as if they were long lost friends, getting the pack scent on him as the other two moved to do the same.

“Thanks, Jackson. I’d say it’s good to have you here, but let’s not rush the reparation of years’ worth of damage to whatever potential our friendship once had.”

“I was an asshole, and selfish. I’m sorry about the shit I put all of you through, it won’t happen again. Getting my guts torn out by an Omega made me realize how important the Pack was to me. I didn’t want to die alone,” he added quietly, stressing the alone more than anything.

“You should come over to our Pack Headquarters, you’ve missed a lot,” Danny eased into the conversation with a smile that threatened to break his face.

“Yeah, I’ll just-” He stopped to pull out his phone and text his parents that he’d be gone for a while before following them out of the airport.

            Derek was never so glad that Lydia had broken up with Aiden as now, that sort of tension could have wrecked them for weeks with anxiety and hurt. Ethan didn’t seem jealous of Danny and Jackson’s friendship, and from the quiet, submissive feelings he was sending off, Jackson wasn’t planning on starting any fights that would lead to him becoming an Omega again anytime soon. Almost dying had a habit of humbling people.

“So, Stiles and Scott are Alphas now,” the returned Beta started once they were collected in the mass of blankets, pillows, and mattresses.

“It’s kind of a long story. But badass, I was a total badass and got like no credit for it,” Stiles complained, as if just realizing no one gave him a plaque for killing two Alphas.

“I think everyone was just worried that stroking your ego any further would cause you to go on a power trip, you know, like Jackson used to do constantly,” Lydia returned, voice tight.

“I’m going to need to buy you a lot of jewelry and textbooks, aren’t I?” Jackson sighed, resigned.

“Excessive amounts, and only the most tasteful and expensive. I’ve been in a particle physics mood lately as well, so get on that.”

            Derek wasn’t particularly sure where they were all going to be in five years, but he had a good feeling they’d still be a Pack. None of them were perfect, but he had more than he’d ever thought he could ask for and the person who’d given it to him wanted nothing in return. He nuzzled further into Stiles and let himself drift off to Isaac and Jackson arguing over whether the pack could drive the Porsche or not. He wasn’t fixed, but he was happier than he could ever remember being, and that was close enough. 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [faults and flour-stains](https://archiveofourown.org/works/912815) by [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings)




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